


Battaglia con Brio

by ladderax (allnuthatchforest)



Category: Inception
Genre: Alternate Universe - Classical Music, Classical Music, Collaboration, Duelling, Enemy Lovers, Framing Story, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Love/Hate, M/M, Musicians, Rival Relationship, Rivalry, Storytelling, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allnuthatchforest/pseuds/ladderax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames are rival composers in the court of Emperor Saito. Loosely based on Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, but the plot diverges rather wildly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battaglia con Brio

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by eternalsojourn.

Arthur brushed a little invisible dust off of the piano key. He knew the clock was just about to strike eleven, and it wasn't like Ariadne to be late for her lesson. The only sound was that of the Emperor's spaniels padding down the hall. He pressed a key absently, hearing the click of his fingernail against the ivory, the muted knelling of the hammer against the string.

The huge gilded door swung open, and Ariadne bustled in, cheeks flushed and skirts rustling.

"I’m ready for my lesson, Maestro," she said brightly. 

"Ariadne, how many times do I have to tell you," he said, smiling mildly, "please call me Arthur. I don't believe in such formalities."

Ariadne rolled her eyes at that.

"Well, what do you have for me today?" he asked. "If I recall correctly, you were having some trouble with the scherzo in the Mockingbird Sonata?"

"Ah yes.” Ariadne blushed and looked down at the embroidery on her skirt. I’m afraid I haven't really been able to devote much time to that. I’ve been a bit...distracted." she said sheepishly.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yes. You see--" she strode over to the piano and took her usual place beside Arthur--"since I learned that Herr Eames was coming to town, I've been completely preoccupied with his music. It's all I can think about, and all I can play. So I'm afraid poor Molinari hasn't been getting my full attention, at all."

Arthur's ears perked up at this, and he feigned surprise. "Eames is coming to town?"

Ariadne brightened. "Oh, yes! They're performing his Concerto at the palace in March. Surely you'd heard about it?"

"Perhaps, but it slipped my mind. I am not all that familiar with Eames. Perhaps you can acquaint me?"

The girl's cheeks filled even more with color. She straightened her back and arched her fingers. From the moment the pads of her fingers touched the keys, Arthur was dumbstruck by the elegance of the melodic lines. It was as if there were no instrument producing the music, no error-prone human being filtering the glorious arcs of sound. Part of that was Ariadne's talent and the quality of the piano, which was the finest in Marchia. But most of it was Eames' music. Arthur had often marveled how, though his themes were simple, almost childlike, they slotted together with their variations so elegantly that they sounded impossibly ornate at times. The best musical minds of his time seemed to agree that Eames was the sort of genius who came along only once in one, two, perhaps even three lifetimes.

It was a lie that Arthur was not acquainted with Eames. Arthur knew quite well who Eames was. Since he was a young boy in the Marchian countryside he had heard talk of an extraordinary young talent from Albionoria, a boy his age who filled concert halls and could improvise a complex sonata off the top of his head. Arthur's mother had often come up beside Arthur when he was at the piano, kissed his head, and said, "You'll be just like that Eames boy someday."

"Are you sure that wasn't supposed to be a natural, Ariadne?" Arthur snapped to attention. Ariadne's playing stopped short.

"No, I'm only playing it the way he wrote it," she said. "He wrote that as a sharp. I must've played this one hundreds of times."

"Well, that must be a mistake on his part," said Arthur.

The note, he knew, was perfectly placed.

§

The guests were beginning to filter in. Some of them were people Arthur had not seen before, noblemen, wealthy merchants, even dignitaries in foreign garb. They wore the latest fashions, and it took much effort on his part not to gawk at the lavish brocades and buckles, at the handiwork on the canes' knobs and the lush embroidery on the womens' skirts. Arthur himself wore a simple yet well-made black coat and matching breeches. He sometimes wished he could wear clothes more daring, more of the moment, but he did not feel it was his place to stand out. Like a piano, his job was primarily about what he could do, not how he looked.

He wove slowly through the crowd, listening in on bits of conversation. This duke was reminiscing about his war days; that countess was talking about the worms in her little dog's ear. He usually liked eavesdropping on people, but certain conversations were not worth hearing for the hundredth time.

At moments such as these, Arthur was struck by a rare awareness of his own relative youth. As a teacher and court musician, he often felt decades older than his students although he was only twenty-nine.The other young people present were probably young in the way he himself was, used to hewing themselves to the molds of decrepit diplomats, hurtling towards old age years before their time.

Arthur found himself growing restless. While all of the dignitaries were drinking their wine and mingling, loudly praising the high vaulted ceiling with the buttresses meant to evoke the sun's rays and the fireplace with the mantle that looked like frozen flames, he slipped off, unnoticed, into another room.

Only slightly less ornate than the ballroom, this room held all of the food for the banquet later on. Arthur furtively plucked a meringue from a tray and slid it between his lips.

"You didn't seem like the type for mischief, but I had you all wrong."

Arthur jerked around, confused. He couldn't peg the source of the voice.

"Where are you?"

"I'm down here." The tablecloth lifted, and the young man's head poked out from under it. He was wearing a bright gold jacket embroidered with large red flowers. A few strands of his wig were out of place, and his full lips were flushed.

"Are you a child, or do you just enjoy acting like one?" Arthur asked sternly.

"Says the man who can't wait two hours for a piece of candy." The young man laughed, low and throaty. "You should share, at least."

"There's plenty up here. Come and get it yourself."

The young man crept out from under the table on his hands and knees. "Don't you know who I am? I'm used to being served."

"You're a spoiled puppy is what you are. You want me to put a biscuit right in your mouth?"

The young man bit his lip, and Arthur was transfixed by the white spot that formed around his teeth, by the redness creeping out to the edges. "That's exactly what I want."

Arthur impulsively grabbed another meringue from the platter, knelt down, and wedged it between the man's lips. "Happy now?"

"Mmmhhmmmn nnnn nnfff," the young man replied.

Arthur shook his head. "I do not understand a word you just said." Ashamed of himself for the way he was behaving, but unable not to indulge this boy, he took the biscuit from his mouth.

"I said, there are things I'd much rather have you put between my lips."

Arthur's mind went dizzy. "I don't understand."

The young man reached out and touched Arthur’s cravat, running it between his middle and index fingers. Slowly, he leaned in and touched his lips to Arthur’s. Arthur could taste the residual sweetness of the crumbs, and he licked the edges of the young man’s impossibly full lips, cleaning off the rest. 

“Quick learner.” The man grinned.

“How do you know what I know.” Arthur bit down on the other man’s lip, drawing a soft hiss out of him.

“Vicious little ferret. I’d love to root around in your burrow.” The man ran the tip of his nose down the side of Arthur’s face. He nipped Arthur’s cheek. “Could use a spot of color there. Want me to do the other one? Or would you rather just get to the rooting around?”

Arthur rose to his feet, tugging the young man up with him. They were standing nose to nose, and Arthur could feel the man’s hot, labored breath on his lips.

“You want me to take you right here. On this table.” The man said it breathlessly, disbelievingly, as though Arthur had actually asked him in words. And perhaps he had. As good as.

Arthur pushed the young man backwards, into the edge of the table. The man grabbed Arthur’s hips and spun him around, and Arthur hoisted himself up. He savored the feeling of the edge digging into the backs of his thighs. The man fumbled with Arthur’s trousers, cursing when the tight holes refused to release the buttons.

“It’s all right. I’ll do mine. You do yours.”

The man had little more luck with his own. He was panting, desperate. Arthur watched him in fond amusement. Finally the man slid his trousers down around his hips, so Arthur could admire his thick, blond-fuzzed thighs. Strong for a duke or a diplomat’s son, he thought. Arthur reached out and wrapped his fingers around the man’s cock. He ached to explore its ruddy, tender skin with his tongue.

“If your arse is as tight as your buttonholes, I’ll die happy right now.” The man dragged his teeth around the curve of Arthur’s ear as he helped Arthur work his pants down over his buttocks.

“Wait. Listen. Do you hear that?” The silence around them, which had until now only been broken by occasional words, fabric rustles, and hot breaths, now had another thread woven into it. It was a terse five-note piano melody that sounded as artless as a birdcall. A frantic look crept across the young man’s face, and he scrambled to button up his trousers.

“Sounds like someone’s playing Eames,” Arthur said, rising to his feet and sighing. “Are you an admirer of his?”

“Perhaps his biggest.” The young man flashed Arthur a grin over his shoulder as he pushed open the double doors with both hands.

And the music stopped.

“Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests,” the young man began, surveying the room and all of its flabbergasted inhabitants. “I am Edward Eames, and I’m sorry that I’ve already started in on the sweets.”

§

“Gentlemen. Come in,” the Chancellor said with a sweep of his arm.

Arthur stepped forward into the Emperor’s parlor. He studied the oil paintings on the wall in their frames of golden sculpted foliage, at the diamond-encrusted clock mounted above the fireplace, at the scrolled and powdered wigs of the stuffy old court musicians who were already perched like gouty frogs on their damask chairs, coughing and shuffling. He looked at everything but Eames.

He and Eames had not spoken since Chancellor Browning had introduced them formally at the gala. Eames had said only “Oh, you’re Arthur Hahnemann? I always thought you were older,” before chasing after a servant with a tray full of hors d’oeuvres and grabbing an entire stem of grapes. Arthur had hoped Eames would say something kind about his music, even if it was only about the Purgatorio, but there was nothing.

Eames strutted over to the wall, examining the paintings.

“We have fox hunts in Albionoria too,” he said. “But we mostly just put on fancy clothes and guns, pose atop our horses and get our portraits done. Then at the end of the day we throw our hands up and wonder why nothing’s gotten killed.”

Emperor Saito, seated beneath a painting of his grandfather in coronation regalia, did not look amused.

“Herr Eames, please take a seat.”

Arthur was sitting already, safely between Chancellor Browning and Choirmaster Meyerburg. He knew and liked them well enough. They were intelligent men, men of honor and virtue, and they could always muster up some mild praise for his latest works.

“Now, as I am sure you know,” the Emperor began, “the tenth anniversary of our victory against Helvetia is fast approaching. There will be a countrywide celebration, and I had hoped to mark it with a musical work written for the occasion. Herr Eames, I had thought we might offer you the opportunity to submit something for consideration.”

Arthur felt as though the breath had been punched from his lungs.

“With all due respect, Your Worship,” Arthur began, resting his lips against his fist for a moment as though to shield himself before speaking, “shouldn’t the task of writing patriotic music fall to...someone with actual patriotic feelings for the country in question?”

The music masters nodded and grunted, sounding as if they were in agreement.

“Well.” Eames was reclining in his chair, legs spread wide. “Perhaps I didn’t have the good fortune to be born the ambitious second son of a Marchian burgher, like some of us here.” He glanced blithely in Arthur’s direction. “But I am a great admirer of yours. And I do not give praise lightly. I read everything I could about the battle of Raban’s Lea, Your Worship. You knew the terrain like the back of your hand. You knew exactly where to hide those infantry lines so they’d be out of the line of fire. Brilliant.”

The officials murmured their approval.

“Duly noted, Herr Eames.” Saito said plainly.

“Your Worship,” said Arthur, shifting forward in his seat, “I could give you all sorts of facts about the Helvetian Wars. I could spend hours praising your tactics or regaling the brave men who lived and died for the glory of Marchia. But the fact is that I know the people of this country far better than he does.” He turned his head to address Eames directly. ” I have heard people, Herr Eames, say that your music is…strange, and uncomfortable to listen to, and lacks the proper reverence for tradition. Do you really want that sort of approach to a subject of such importance, Your Excellencies?”

Eames laughed incredulously. “Is that the best you can say in your favor? That your music won’t offend anyone?”

“Gentlemen, please.” Browning raised his hand. “I think it best if we allow the music to speak for itself.”

§

 _Let the music speak for itself_. Arthur laughed to himself, shuffling the papers around on his music stand as though that would rearrange the notes into brilliance. He’d do fine for himself so long as anything _but_ the music spoke.

He opened the cabinet under his desk and lifted out one of his many heavy notebooks. He often rifled through its pages to calm himself, even when his eyes couldn’t focus on the contents. It was full of notes on melodies: his dissections of hundreds upon hundreds of melodic lines, trying to pinpoint exactly what it was that made them good.

He had identified a few basic principles, but then when he tried to replicate them, he could never identify what made the exact difference between their sublimity and his own wooden lumbering from note to note. 

He dipped his quill in the inkwell and began to write. 

_Once there was a man who met a sorcerer who taught him the secret of stealing souls, he scrawled on his desk ledger. There was no charm, no talent that could not be his. Soon he unlearned the word envy. He left his enemies mindless, bereft of wit and art. He became legion. At last he knew the sound of a heart at rest._

Sighing, he let the quill fall and walked over to the piano. He had no time for frivolities. He had a concerto to write.

Every time he sat down at the piano he had the same fond hope: that this would be the time the notes found each other of their own accord. That he would just stagger into a motif, simple and fecund like a cluster of berries in a clearing, full of sweetness and the urge to perpetuate more energy, more enormity, more life. Maybe this is the right note, he thought as he touched F sharp. It resounded with a dull clunk.

 _That isn’t right,_ he thought. 

A thud resonated from inside the piano, and for a moment he feared the instrument was about to collapse. He leaned into it cautiously, and heard frenzied movement, what sounded like claws scraping against the strings.

He raised the lid slowly. When enough light had entered through the crack, he saw two moist circles floating in the darkness. He raised the lid more and the thing in the piano squeaked at him.

It was a ferret.

And it was wearing a jacket. 

Arthur swooped in and grabbed the creature before it could bolt. The thing squealed and thrust its little limbs out stiffly, and Arthur pressed it to his chest so it couldn’t wriggle free. He looked down. The jacket it was wearing was black brocade, an almost perfect replica of the one he most favored. He was sure that anyone who saw him stalking down the palace halls furiously, holding a ferret dressed like himself, would surely snicker, and he was right. The maids he saw hid their laughter behind their hands, but that didn’t lessen their sharp edges.

“Eames.”

He kicked the door open, not caring who the sound might wake.

Eames was lying in bed, a pipe between his fingers, and music strewn across the sheets; at least he was alone, thank God. Or so Arthur hoped. He’d heard rumors about Eames’ sexual appetites—he’d certainly borne witness to them. Eames shrugged the quilt from his bare chest and looked at Arthur from beneath heavy eyelids. He pressed the pipe to his lips and took another long drag before he even spoke.

“Ah. I see you’ve met Arthur the Second.”

Arthur thrust the ferret down onto Eames’ bed.

“What an absurd and juvenile prank. You actually had a maid waste her time on making a jacket for a ferret?”

“Oh, no, I sewed it myself.” He blew a long rivulet of smoke in Arthur’s direction. “It’s a hobby of mine. The rhythm helps me compose.”

“Well. You should be very proud of yourself.” The ferret scurried up towards Eames, who picked it up by the scruff of its neck, then released it. It nosed at the edge of the quilt.

“Did you scream?” Eames asked.

Arthur looked at him through narrowed eyes. “No. I did not scream.”

“Too bad. I always wanted to make you scream.”

“If you’re trying to ruffle my feathers, Herr Eames,” Arthur said, smiling tightly, “you are wasting your time.”

Eames reclined on his pile of pillows and pushed his blanket down. “You don’t want to get in?”

Arthur looked at Eames. Pebbled waves of candlelight flickered across the other man’s skin. His body looked warm, strong, capable of keeping secrets. Was Eames really inviting him to slide between his sheets, to be overwhelmed by his smell and his heat and his closeness? It was tempting. But the thought of fucking someone with no respect for him whatsoever made his flesh crawl.

Arthur turned on his heel. “Absolutely not.”

He heard claws scrabbling on fabric as he walked to the door.

§

Arthur’s throat was parched, but he didn’t want to trouble Cobb for a drink.

Cobb’s parlor always made Arthur want to find an excuse to leave as soon as possible. There was dust inches thick on the rickety old tables and shelves. The drapes let in not even the thinnest seam of light. Arthur glanced above the mantel, and when his eyes met the large, haunted gray eyes of a woman in a dark and mold-dappled portrait, he looked away quickly to avoid the vertigo creeping up his spine. 

Since Cobb’s wife had died, nearly two years earlier, the man’s life had fallen into ruin. He had lost nearly all of his household staff except for Ariadne, the governess for his two children. And it was Arthur who paid for her upkeep, and gave her music lessons free of charge. He was fond of the girl, who was opinionated and charming and had a real gift for the piano; he also felt he owed it to Cobb to ensure he had at least someone to look after him and his household. 

As he and Cobb sat together, caught up in an awkward silence broken by an occasional sneeze, he could hear Ariadne practicing on the out-of-tune spinet upstairs. She was playing Eames’ Piano Sonata No. 35 again. Even on the small, sad-sounding piano, the piece was revelatory. Arthur thanked God that he had talent enough, at least, to hear the subtly repeated palindromic phrases, the complex layering of the rhythms in a style influenced by old Albionorian madrigals, the sly musical jokes.

The metallic plunkings erased the surroundings for a moment. The piece was a lilting seduction, or an argument, two voices speaking to each other, each with a rhythm echoing that of spoken words. The treble clef mocked and distorted the left hand’s phrases. The left hand responded with soft menace, saying less but becoming bolder. The parts combined into a barn swallow’s dance of great depths and heights, the roles becoming increasingly indistinct in a clatter of feathery strikes.

“I am sorry to trouble you,” Arthur said at long last, turning his cane in his hands. The music had stopped, and he could hear a child’s fist hitting the black keys. “But the Emperor has commissioned patriotic works from myself and Herr Eames. They are to be performed next month at the Royal Hall. And I need my principal violinist.”

Cobb stared blankly through him. Even in the guttering oil-lamp light Arthur could see his eyes were rimmed with red. His hand shook as he reached for a sticky decanter with only millimeters of whiskey left in it. He decided against opening it, and rested his hand in his lap once again.

“It’s kind of you to ask, Arthur, but I told you. I don’t play anymore.”

Arthur sighed. “Why don’t you leave the city? Sometimes new surroundings can help us leave the past behind.” They’d had this conversation before. 

“You always have the answer to every problem, don’t you.” Cobb fixed him with an incisive glare. Every so often Arthur caught a glimpse of the man’s old passion and ferocity, but it was always short-lived.

“I only know from experience. When I left the village—“

“No offense, Arthur, but your troubled childhood is hardly the same as what I’ve been through. What I’ve done. I could have done something to save her, Arthur. And I didn’t. It would have been so simple.”

Arthur rubbed his sweaty palm vigorously against his knee, trying not to let Cobb see his discomfort at the mention of his wife. 

“Playing again would be good for you.” Arthur pleaded.

“No. I told you. No more. It’s hard enough hearing Ariadne playing all the time upstairs. But it keeps her happy, and the children like it.”

The music had resumed. Now Ariadne was playing Eames’s Nocturne in A Minor, and Cobb got a faraway look in his eyes. Arthur could even have sworn he saw his mouth perk up into a semblance of a smile.

“It isn’t only Ariadne and the children who like this, is it,” Arthur asked softly. “Genius does have a way of slipping in through the cracks.”

“Like a god in the form of a golden rain,” Cobb murmured.

Arthur paused. He knew he would regret what he was about to ask, and he wasn’t sure he could even deliver what he was about to offer. But it would be worth it, if it meant that there was a chance that Cobb’s sublime musicianship could elevate his material.

“What if I told you, Cobb,” Arthur began, doing his best to affect an authoritative tone, “What if I told you that there was a chance that if you played my concerto, you might also be able to play for Eames?”

Slowly, a new life seemed to uncoil its tendrils through Cobb’s body. He sat up straighter in his chair and leaned towards Arthur.

“I told you, I don’t play anymore,” he said. But there was far less conviction behind his words.

Arthur lifted his hat from where it was hanging on the arm of the chair and placed it on his head. He nodded to Cobb, rising from his seat. “I’ll see what I can do.”

§

Late that night, Arthur knocked on Eames’ door. He could hear multiple voices from inside. _Excellent,_ he thought ruefully. _Upon what manner of entertainment am I about to walk in?_ He pressed his ear to the door and could hear several men and a woman, laughing loudly, probably drunk. A shame for someone of his talent to act like such a good-for-nothing.

He knocked again and was about to give up and turn around when the door opened a crack.

“Yes, Herr Hahnemann?” Eames asked saucily. His wig—a bright red one--was askew, and Arthur could smell alcohol on his breath. A patch of chest hair peeked out from his billowy open shirt collar, and Arthur steeled himself not to look at it.

“I’m here to ask a favor of you, Herr Eames,” he began.

“Please.” Eames opened the door wider. “Come inside.”

To Arthur’s shock, Ariadne was sitting there, on the floor, simple cotton skirts spread around her. She was eating bonbons from a small dish perched on a tuffet, looking entirely too familiar with the environs for Arthur’s taste. _Of course she’s become Eames’s lover, he thought. I should have seen the signs all along. She’s obsessed with him. Can she even be faulted for it?_ Next to her was Yusuf, a man he knew to be a gifted baritone singer but with whom he was not otherwise acquainted.

“Yusuf, Ariadne, this is my dear friend Herr Arthur Hahnemann.” He clapped Arthur on the back and pushed him towards his friends.

“We’ve met,” Ariadne said, around a mouthful of chocolate. “He’s my music teacher.”

“Ariadne,” Arthur said, a note of disapproval creeping in, “is this really—appropriate—company, for a young lady of your manners and breeding?”

“Don’t worry, Arthur,” she said gaily. “I’m accounted for. My fiancé is here to make sure I don’t do anything untoward.” Arthur looked away, certain she was gazing at Eames with open affection.

“Ariadne hasn’t told you?” Yusuf cut in. “We’re to be married.” He looked back at them and saw that her hand was lain on his, and that they looked at each other with intimate mischief. Arthur breathed a sigh of relief that he hoped was not audible.

Eames was standing by his liquor cabinet with bottles in his hands. “We were just about to play a game, Arthur. Would you like to join us?”

“No thank you, Herr Eames,” he said, trying to sound as gracious as possible. “I must be getting back to my work so that I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour.”

Eames chortled. “I prefer sleeping at unreasonable hours myself,” he said. “The daytime is full of such boring people.”

Arthur wondered if that comment was directed at himself, but tried to brush it aside.

“Do you truly not enjoy games, Arthur?” Eames asked, reclining in a large, plush yellow chair and propping his stockinged feet on an ottoman. 

“I usually find them to be a waste of valuable time.” Arthur hoped that his posture would signal how uncomfortable he was, how boring he was, so that Eames and his guests would dismiss him and get on with their revelry.

“Surely you enjoy stories, though,” Eames replied. He poured himself a tumbler full of wine, but set it down on the black marble table at his side rather than sipping it.

“He does!” Ariadne burst in. “I heard him tell the children the most wonderful story once. What was that, Arthur? The one about the cat soldier? I really do wish you’d come visit more often, so you can tell more stories.”

Arthur pressed his fingers to his temple. “That’s very flattering, Ariadne, but I’m not in the mood right now.”

“Oh come on, Arthur!” She sprang to her feet and grasped his hands, and dragged him to an empty chair. “Sit down and play with us. Show Herr Eames what you can do.”

 _I’m dreadfully tired of embarrassing myself in front of Herr Eames,_ he thought wearily.

“Excellent to have you with us, Arthur,” Eames said. The usual dark, rolling consonants of his Albionorian accent were even more pronounced because he’d been drinking, and he sounded like a schoolboy who’d only begun learning High Marchian. Arthur snuck glimpses of Eames’ lips as they worked around the rough contour of Arthur’s native language. He held his lips more open than a native Marchian, barely touched them together on a bilabial fricative, as though he were teasing the sounds, making the sounds beg to come through him.

“So a game, hmm?” Arthur asked as Ariadne nudged the plate of chocolates in his direction. 

“But Arthur, they’re delicious!” she protested. “They’re a Rieslandish delicacy. They’re called Venus’s Nipples. Because of the shape, you know.”

He waved it away. Eames clucked at him, but the truth was that Arthur was a bit ashamed to eat something with “nipple” in the name in front of Eames. “What are the rules of this game?”

“Well,” started Yusuf, “one person starts out telling a story. And if you pause for longer than five seconds, you have to take a drink. And if you get stuck and can’t continue, or if you pause for longer than twenty seconds, you forfeit and the next person has to pick up the next part of the story. And the story ends—“

“And if you interrupt, you have to put money in a pile on the table,” Ariadne interrupted.

“Thank you, Ariadne, he said, fondness creasing the corners of his eyes. “The other players have to decide when the story ends. If the story ends to their satisfaction, they put ten florins in the pile. If one person decides that the story is not ended, then the turn goes to the next person, and the person who told the bad ending has to put ten florins in the pot as well. The person who completes the story gets the money.”

Arthur sighed. “Fine, I’ll play. Who’s starting?”

“I will,” offered Ariadne. She thought for a moment, then began. “A long time ago, in a kingdom called Volaria, there was a man—

“Oh, I forgot to mention that if you forfeit you have to remove an article of clothing,” said Yusuf. Arthur’s eyes widened.

“Yusuf! One florin!” Ariadne demanded. He plunked his coin down on a scarf in the middle of the floor.

“Oh no.” Arthur made to rise from his chair. “I am not playing this game. None of you should be playing this game either. You are above this kind of behavior, all of you.”

“Sit down,” Eames said, exasperated. “Don’t you want to hear how the story ends?”

“You all have to pay a florin now,” Ariadne said brightly. Arthur sat back down and reached in his pocket for a coin.

“As I was saying. A long time ago, in a place called Volaria,”

“Kingdom,” giggled Eames. “It was a kingdom.”

“Eames!” she shouted. He tossed a florin towards the pile.

“In a kingdom called Volaria, in a small town, there was a man who could make people immortal by filling them with his seed.” Arthur felt his cheeks redden. “He learned this one day when a girl he’d been fucking fell off a horse and the injury was so bad it should have snapped her neck in half. But she just got up and brushed off her skirts and walked away. And a few weeks later, another girl he’d fucked got a terrible fever and the doctors said she only had a few days to live. But then the fever subsided and she was fine, ready to help her husband with the farmwork and care for her children and everything. Word began to spread of his power, and people came from far and wide to partake of his immortality-granting seed. He started to accept money for it. But then one day—“ Ariadne paused, chewing on a hangnail. Eames looked at his watch.

“Twenty seconds! Ariadne, an item of your clothing?” Eames commanded. She untied the scarf from her neck and released it from her fingers, and it fluttered towards the center of the room. She looked towards Yusuf.

“One day, the man with the immortal seed….” Yusuf took a drink, laughing as he wiped his mouth. “One day the man with the immortal seed,” he tried to breathe to contain his laughter, but he only got more and more breathless with it.

“You have five seconds left or it passes to me,” Eames said sternly. “Four…three…two…and…that’ll be your shirt, sir.” Yusuf untucked his shirt and tossed it onto Ariadne’s scarf.

“Well.” Eames began. “The man with the immortal cum was sad, because he went to a witch doctor and asked him if he’d ever heard of such a thing as cum making people immortal. And the doctor said yes, but the bad news was that it didn’t work on the person who…shit…what is that word?” Eames took a swig of wine. Apparently, when he’d been drinking, Eames lost his grasp of foreign languages. Ten seconds passed, then fifteen, while Eames was wracking his brain trying to recall the words for what he wanted to say next. At last he just sighed and pulled at the hem of his shirt. Then, instead, he released it and yanked the wig off of his head.

It was the first time Arthur had seen Eames without a wig--even when he’d been lying in bed he’d had a curly black wig on. His light brown hair was cropped short, and it stood up in messy spikes.

“Allright, Arthur,” he said, sloshing a big sip of wine in his mouth so that Arthur could see some of the dark red fluid creeping at the corner of his lips, “let’s see what you’ve got.”

Arthur took a deep breath and began the story again. “It didn’t work on the person who…ejaculated it. Or so this witch doctor said. So the man was terribly sad, and he fell into a deep despair at the unfairness of life. How is it, he thought, that I can grant others immortality, yet I cannot have it for myself? And then one—one day, he got word that one of the women he had…been with…”

“Oh, Arthur, just say fucked,” Eames said. He’d already begun fishing for a coin before he started speaking.

“Fine, then. One of the women he had fucked had died. And it was a small town, so word travelled fast. And one day, the man came home from a day in the fields to find all of the men and women he had fucked standing in front of his house, wielding knives and pitchforks. Wild-eyed, calling him a charlatan. He threw up his hands and invited them to kill him, wanting to face death like a man. And Someone rushed at him and stabbed him through the stomach with a pitchfork. But what happened next shocked everyone. Because no blood came out of the wound. It was as though nothing had penetrated him at all. He looked down, calmly, and said, ‘I suppose immortality is just not for everyone.’” Arthur took a brief pause and surveyed the fire-lit faces around him. They were rapt. He sipped his wine, more for courage than for anything else. “The people began to talk among themselves, and there were rumblings that the effects of the immortality potion were cumulative. The ones who’d cheated death, they found, were the ones who’d fucked the man most. But the man thought back to those people, and realized, to his horror, that those people were also slowly going insane. He tried to warn them that the more they partook of his immortality, uh, serum, the more they would go insane. But they didn’t listen, and they tied him up…”

Arthur talked on, telling them how the man had escaped his bonds by convincing the crazed people that he needed to be alone to get an erection, how they allowed him to go into his bedroom and how he escaped through the window, and how he evaded his pursuers for years. How he fell in love with a young girl but wouldn’t fuck her, and how one day the crazed pack of immortals caught up with her and told her why he wouldn’t make love to her. How she became obsessed with the idea of invulnerability, and betrayed him to his tormentors, only to decide at the last minute to throw herself in front of him. How they killed her and he surrendered to them, having nothing left to live for.

After he paused to signal he was done, spreading his hands across his lap and inhaling after feeling like he hadn’t breathed for years, both Yusuf and Ariadne threw coins into the pile.

“Well done!” said Yusuf. Ariadne clapped. Only Eames had not yet thrown a coin into the pile. Arthur watched him anxiously. His face betrayed no emotion whatsoever. Yet again he thinks I’m worthless, Arthur thought with despair. Of course.

Then a wide smile spread across Eames’ face. He stood up and dropped a coin into the pile; he wrapped the whole bundle up in Ariadne’s scarf and placed it, heavy and solid, onto Arthur’s lap.

“A fine story, dear sir,” he said, settling back in his chair. “Autobiographical?” Arthur glared at him.

“Leave him alone, Eames,” Yusuf chided. “Are you just jealous that for once you didn’t win something?”

“Shall we play again?” chirped Ariadne.

Arthur rose in one swift movement. “I’ll be leaving now. It was a pleasure.” He tipped his hat slightly, and made the barest of bows, and walked briskly out of the room, not caring that the door slammed behind him.

§

Arthur gripped the reins of his sorrel mare as he trotted up next to the Emperor. It was a dazzlingly clear spring day. The Emperor usually preferred to tour the palace grounds when the sky was overcast, so that the vivid colors and general good humor in the air didn’t distract him from any flaws. Today the sky was cloudless ultramarine, no fog or drizzle pulled a heavy visor over the eyes, and the flowers in the terraced gardens were lush and open, every petal sharply outlined, every leaf shining and keen. A couple of ladies were playing croquet on the lawn, and Arthur watched them, admiring the pastel-colored spring dresses as airy as meringues.

“You wanted to speak with me privately, Your Worship?”

“I did.” Saito pulled his horse to a stop as they overlooked the vast oblong reflecting pond at the center of the palace lawn. Chancellor Browning and his aides were already riding around the edges of it, and a servant bent down to stick something in the water, presumably to test its quality. “I wanted to congratulate you in person.”

“For what, Your Worship?”

Saito granted him a rare smile. “Because I have chosen your concerto to be performed at the anniversary celebration next month.”

Arthur was dumbfounded. Their concertos had been performed in the Royal Hall the previous week, before an audience of the Emperor, his family, his staff, and and members of the Royal College of Music. Cobb had at last agreed to play the violin, and his solo did, for a moment, make Arthur believe that his concerto was worthy of the Emperor. But then, from the very first phrase of Eames’s concerto, a shimmering chromatic run which shattered into a two-note call that would haunt and torment the rest of the piece like a golden horsefly, his illusions dropped away.

Saito was already beginning to trot ahead of him, and he urged his horse forward into the shady orchard. “But—Your Worship—“

“Isn’t that what you’ve been working for your whole life, Arthur?” Saito asked, ducking as they passed under a branch laden with hard green apples. “Why ask questions? You were the superior composer.”

 _I was not the superior composer,_ he thought. But it was not for him to question the Emperor. _Perhaps he had truly liked it better,_ Arthur mused, smiling to himself.

§

He barely saw Eames over the next week. At first he wondered if Eames had left the palace. After all, he had no real reason to stay there; his run of initial performances and galas was long since passed, and if the Emperor no longer had work for him, he was most certainly overstaying his welcome.

One day, while roaming the palace halls as he tended to do when bored or uninspired, he heard a throaty, slow laugh that could only be Eames’. It was coming from one of the palace’s music rooms, and as he approached he heard the voice of the Emperor’s thirteen-year-old daughter, laughing gaily. He peered through the crack in the door. The Princess Naomi sat at the piano bench, with Eames next to her, explaining that the sonata contained some sort of secret message about pee. Naomi laughed behind her hands and kept looking nervously behind her, awaiting the approval or disapproval of—her father. The Emperor was there, watching a routine piano lesson. He did not seem overly concerned that his daughter was so excited about a urine joke.

Arthur grimaced. The Emperor had never sat in on any of Arthur’s lessons with Naomi. And Naomi had been his student. Arthur’s. That was one of the jobs of a court composer. Wasn’t it? No one had even told him. He had seen Naomi just yesterday, and she had been a quiet, sharp-eyed girl, smiling politely at his jokes. But never laughing. Never excited to be in front of a piano, fingers practically itching to leap onto the keys. 

That afternoon, when he knew the Emperor and Chancellor would be meeting, he pressed his ear to the door of the Emperor’s meeting room, hoping to hear some explanation of Eames’ continued presence in the palace. The familiar voices of Saito and Browning were indeed mingling once again in spirited debate.

“…but Your Worship, I do not think it prudent for you to allow such an influence on your daughter,” Browning complained.

“Naomi is my daughter,” said Saito, “and I want her to have the best musical education possible.” Arthur dug his nails into his fist at this.

“Besides,” Saito continued, “I already took your advice on one matter concerning Herr Eames. You were wise to suggest that it would present a bad example to the nation if we were to laud a patriotic work by a man who is a known gambler, a man who has been caught on multiple occasions drinking and whoring. I am still convinced that Herr Eames’ work was vastly superior, but—“

“I’m sorry to disturb Your Eminences,” Arthur interrupted, swinging the door open. The two men looked at him in surprise and mild annoyance, Browning slowly lowering the teacup from his lips. “I—I seem to have lost my—key—in here yesterday during the meeting with the choirmaster, and I was not aware there was a meeting going on.”

“By all means,” Browning said.

Arthur made a show of bending over and examining the ground carefully for his phantom key. He lifted tablecloths and peered around the legs of chairs. “I’m sure it was in here somewhere. This is the last place I know I had it.”

Browning muttered something that sounded like _bloody artists,_ but Arthur chose not to hear it.

“Ah, here it is,” he said, plucking a piece of lint from the floor and shoving it into his pocket lightning fast. “And—if I may—while I have the attention of Your Eminences,”

“Go on, Arthur,” Saito said.

“I have to say that—perhaps you ought to give Herr Eames’s work another consideration.” Arthur fought to squeeze the painful words out of his throat. “I am well aware, Your Worship, that you said you preferred mine, but please, if you value my talent, then you must also value my taste. And I am firmly convinced—“ he cleared his throat—“I am firmly convinced that Herr Eames wrote the better concerto. By far.”

“You have a reputation as a young man of virtue and restraint,” Browning said, looking Arthur up and down. “And you have had some contact with Herr Eames. Tell me. What do you think of his…morals?”

 _His morals,_ Arthur thought. _Playing childish pranks, drinking, gambling, whoring, encouraging young engaged ladies to remove their clothes in groups of men, brazenly inviting colleagues of equal or greater standing into bed with him._

“I have seen no reason to question Herr Eames’s morals whatsoever,” he said, and silently sent up a prayer asking God to forgive him for lying.

§

“Arthur!” Eames dashed up to him and threw his arms around his neck. Arthur made a slightly exaggerated choking sound.

“What is this for, Eames?” he asked wanly.

“Chancellor Browning said you put in a good word on my behalf,” he said, continuing to clap Arthur on the back. “You are such a dear.”

“There’s no need for sweet nothings,” Arthur said crisply, turning away from Eames to watch the musicians setting up onstage. There was Cobb, in the first violinist’s chair, looking like he’d actually eaten in the recent past. His clothes didn’t hang quite so drably off his shoulders, and as he turned the pegs and slid the bow across each string, listening in for the proper tuning, there was a tinge of contentment, if not excitement. There was something in him right now that was not submerged in some leaden, vengeful past.

“I’m glad you were able to be gracious,” Eames continued. “I think an orchestral work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Helvetian War ought to be imaginative, don’t you? After all, you know, Saito didn’t win the Battle of Raban Lea by playing it safe.”

“Actually, Eames, that’s exactly how the Battle of Raban Lea was won,” he retorted.

“Well, sometimes restraint is imaginative, isn’t it? Tradition can be awfully bombastic.”

“Yes. Of course. I know your dislike of bombast quite well, seeing as you used exactly that word to describe my concerto in front of the entire Royal College.” Just then the Chancellor waved Arthur over, and Eames strode up to take his place in front of the orchestra. 

Arthur was immensely proud that he hadn't slapped Eames across the face. He'd always hated to make a scene.

§

Arthur glanced around him nervously. He was always afraid of being seen when he climbed this particular staircase, but his worry seemed to be ill-founded. Most of the men who came up this way would be unwilling to expose anyone else as they would unquestionably damn themselves in the process.

He knocked on the thin door and it rattled. It was barely worth having a door like that. All the doors and walls on this hallway were thin, and he could hear a polyphony of moans and grunts and smacks merging together.

The door opened.

He’d forgotten how beautiful the young man who opened it was. Robert did not greet him by name, as he usually did; he did not lean in to slyly kiss the corner of Arthur’s mouth. His pale blue eyes regarded Arthur coldly, and he merely stepped aside tartly to let him in. He looked at Arthur as if he were a stranger, the way he had the first time Arthur, tantalized, had followed Robert up to his room and let Robert suck his cock for fifteen florins.

“Why are you back here?” Arthur asked him. “I pay for a nice room for you. Aren’t you freezing?”

“Easier to find work here,” Robert answered casually. “And no one bothers me.”

“Why do you need to find work?”

Robert shrugged. “Boredom. Habit. I meet interesting people sometimes.”

Arthur threw his head back, exasperated.

“It’s not like you ever come to see me anymore anyway, Arthur. When was the last time you even bothered to come play a game of chess?”

Arthur looked guiltily down at his shining shoes against the grimy floor. There were roaches crawling in through the cracks in the gray wall plaster, and Arthur wondered how he ever tolerated even kneeling on that mattress, hammered thin by hundreds of filthy, sweaty bodies. A chill wind made the window shiver.

“I’ve been busy. The Emperor has been commissioning a lot of work from me, and I’m taking on more and more students. I’m exhausted at night.”

“You could come and sleep. You know, you could do practically everything there that you do at the palace.”

Arthur reached out to touch Robert’s cheek. He noticed that there was a long scrape along the cheekbone. “I’m sorry, love—“

“Don’t call me that.”

“Robert, I told you from the beginning that I couldn’t give you everything you wanted. And you understood that perfectly.”

Robert sighed. “It doesn’t mean I can’t be a bit angry that yet another of my hopes has failed to come true.”

At that moment Arthur wished fervently that he could simply love Robert the way Robert, for reasons unknown, seemed to love him. They could live together most of the time; he could look after Robert, make sure he was fed and clothed and warm, and he could allow Robert to look after him, with caresses and reassurances, ensuring that he remembered to eat and sleep. 

“Let’s go back to your room, shall we? It’ll be hard for us to take a bath together here.”

Robert looked him squarely in the eye. “That isn’t why you’re here, though, is it.”

Arthur turned away from his gaze. “No. It’s not.” He was so tempted to turn away now. It was unfair to ask Robert what he was about to ask of him. But, he reminded himself, Robert had continued to seek out clients while they were sleeping together regularly. Said he didn’t want to be Arthur’s kept boy. This was no different.

“Robert,” he began, “I have a favor to ask of you.”'

§

The hunting shack was one of Arthur’s favorite places on the palace grounds. He often came out to think or write, and, like everything about the palace and its grounds, he knew its every crack and crevice.

There was a faint light pouring out between the boards as Arthur snuck up to it, treading lightly, careful not to snap any dry branches with his weight. He’d gotten good at walking soundlessly.

Everything seemed to have gone according to plan. Robert, in the clothing of a young gentleman, had approached Eames on his way to his rehearsal. Eames, like most people, had been unable to resist Robert’s beauty. Robert had suggested the shack as a place to meet; had told Eames that his father used to work for the Emperor and that he’d been shown it as a child. 

It was only a five-minute walk to the palace from here. And it would all be so simple. All Arthur had to do was alert the palace guards that he’d seen trespassers in the forest; they would see the light in the hunting shack and catch Eames and Robert naked together. Arthur knelt in the dirt, brushing aside all care for his clothing, and put his eye up to the crack. What he saw surprised him.

Neither Eames nor Robert was naked or even seemed to be doing anything of a sexual nature. Robert was standing with his hands against the wall as Eames leaned over him, but he didn’t seem to be pushing into him. The thinness of the crack blurred the view, but he was certain he could see Eames’s hand dragging something thin behind it. It looked like a needle and thread. Eames was sewing something, a dark jacket, onto Robert.

“Almost there now,” he heard Eames say. Robert said nothing in return.

Arthur watched as Eames’s deft fingers knotted up the stitch and broke the thread with his teeth. He knew he had planned to alert the guards, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Eames did not turn Robert around. He ran his hands over the young man’s taut back and shoulders and pressed up tight against him. They were roughly the same height. Their hips lined up beautifully. Eames’s hands crept around to Robert’s front, and Arthur watched his shoulders tense as he struggled to undo the buttons. When Robert’s trousers had slid down around his knees, Eames lifted the hem of the long jacket to reveal Robert’s firm, pale, lightly freckled arse. His hand disappeared, and Arthur imagined that Eames was coating it with oil to allow it easier entrance into Robert’s tight hole

Eames’s fingers moved to tease open Robert’s buttocks, and he slowly sunk his fingers into his hole. Arthur was stung by a moment of nostalgia, thinking of fucking Robert, of being fucked by him, but that passed and all he could think of was Eames, wishing he was the one bearing Eames’ weight on his back, the one feeling Eames’ slippery soft lips and sharp teeth against the side of his neck. Arthur’s hand moved to cup his cock, hard inside his trousers. He squeezed himself and swallowed his groan.

“You like that, you little slut?” Eames jerked his spread fingers into Robert rhythmically. Arthur couldn’t see Robert’s reaction. “Oh, yes, I’ll just bet you do. You’re always walking around in those long black jackets like you’re better than everyone else, like you’re above fucking and drinking and games, but I know how badly you’re just dying to get fucked in the arse.” Eames removed his fingers and balanced himself, one hand on the wall, the other on his cock.

 _He’s talking about me,_ Arthur thought in horror. _He’s imagining he’s fucking me. Putting me in my place._

Arthur’s cock didn’t feel humiliated. It was still just painfully hard. And the clenching heat in his gut wanted nothing more than to watch Eames’ cock as it drove into Robert. But from this angle Eames’ backside was obscuring the view.

Arthur snuck around to the north wall of the cabin, where there was another, wider crack. Peeping through this one was riskier. If someone alert happened to glance over, they’d be able to see the gleam of a human eye. But Arthur couldn’t help himself. He pressed his eye to the hole. Eames was slapping his cock lightly against Robert’s hole, then swiping it from the small of his back to his perineum. “Oh, your little pucker is so tight,” Eames panted. “Good thing you keep it clenched like that all the time. Oh, fuck.”

Robert’s face was blank. Suddenly it occurred to Arthur that Robert had to know exactly who Eames was imagining he was. Remorse surged through him. But it was too late. He reached down his pants and fingered his naked cock until he came, hot and thick. It tangled in the hair between his legs and ran down his thighs just as Eames pushed himself into Robert at last.

Not caring how many twigs he snapped or who heard, Arthur dashed through the forest, away from the lighted cabin. Brambles slashed at his wrists. The full, creamy moon shed a revealing light on the grounds; once Arthur was out of the woods he was fully visible to anyone who peered out a window or happened to be walking the lawn at the same time. He ran until he came to the edge of the reflecting pool. Nauseated, he knelt on the cool stones and rested his elbows on the granite edge. He scooped water hungrily onto his face, letting it drip into his collar. His cuffs were wet. When Arthur was a child he could think of no worse feeling than wet cuffs. As he slouched back towards the palace, his sopping wet cuffs were the least of his worries.

§

A long table stretched out almost to a vanishing point. Liveried servants brought platters piled high with breads and fruits, and no sooner were they cleared away than more arrived to take their places. Suckling pigs with glazed skin crouched in the centers of oblong plates; there was pheasant, of course, shot and killed on the palace grounds, and even venison. As all deer belonged to the Emperor, it was officially impossible to get the savory meat anywhere else. Arthur spread his napkin across his lap and sat up straight in his chair, begging his growling stomach not to work his arms like a marionette. He knew he had a reputation as an abstemious young man, and at the moment, it was about all he had in his favor with the Emperor and his officials.

The tittering on either side of him was directed at an empty seat towards the head of the table. He didn't need to hear the exact words to know the content. Everyone was asking: Where is Herr Eames? Not present at a dinner celebrating tomorrow's performance of his so-called Iron Concerto?

Arthur looked neatly ahead of him, trying to regulate the movements of his fork to evoke clockwork. More and more courses arrived: lamb with mint jelly, duck. He prayed that he would be spared the pityingly curious glances of those who had heard the announcement of his concerto's selection, then heard it rescinded. At least the duchess seated next to him was not a busybody; she engaged him for the decorous amount of time, asking if he had read the latest didactic poem by one Schoenwald, and he had nodded and made a few comments on the pleasing regularity of its meter. Then he returned to his solitary state of satisfaction regarding the absence of Herr Eames.

That was to be short-lived, though. At half-past eight, Arthur's ears perked up at the sound of a rapping against one of the closed doors. He watched as a footman opened the door a crack and spoke a few words to someone; then the door squealed open, and all eyes snapped in the direction of the triumphant Herr Eames, whose air suggested nothing by way of apology for his lateness. He was clad in a bright yellow wig and a knee-length jacket embroidered with bold swirls. His stockings were the same yellow as his wig. And, behind him--to the shock and morally offended delight of the revelers--was a slim young man none of them recognized, sleepy-eyed, red-lipped, clearly ill at ease in the gathering of respectable folk. Robert.

Arthur was determined not to react outwardly. He snuck a glance upward and saw that Eames was begging a servant to fetch a chair for his companion. A small chair, ludicrous among the high-backed heavy ones, was obtained from the kitchen; it was wedged between Eames and Browning, who kept his eyes well averted from the young man, intent instead on laughing at every comment made by the Empress.

Once Robert was seated, he had Eames' full attention. Eames angled towards Robert in his chair, leaning in with a perpetual smile well-visible in profile. Several of the guests tried to get Eames' attention, in ways subtle and unsubtle, coughing and staring. The young lady next to him knocked the contents of her crystal wine goblet over into his lap, but he seized a napkin, dabbed at his crotch and resumed giving his singular attention to Robert. It came to a point when the fog of displeasure spread even to the Emperor. He chose that moment to have Browning stand to make an announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the chancellor pronounced, "we are here to celebrate"--and this he said coldly, directing a disapproving glance at Eames--"the extraordinary achievement of Herr Edward Eames, who has composed a work in honor of the tenth anniversary of our resounding victory against Helvetian greed and aggression. With only sounds he captures the glory of troops marching into battle, the courage of young Marchian men leaving home and comfort to defend the motherland. What is truly astonishing," he continued, adding a bit of bilious sweetness to "astonishing", "is that Herr Eames is not only not a native of Marchia, but because of his busy performing schedule, he was exempted from having to fight in the Helvetian wars like most of his Albionorian compatriots. The Iron Concerto is, therefore," he paused, "a true testament to the power of the...imagination." He said "imagination" as though it were "syphilis".

The room was silent. Eames sat, open-mouthed, looking quite frankly a bit foolish, before he burst into a childlike grin.

"Your Eminence!" he said, standing up abruptly and letting his napkin fall from his lap, "Thank you for your kind words. It is an honor to have been selected over my very...tastefully dressed colleague, Herr Hahnemann, a true Marchian patriot who, during the war, was bravely committed to the struggle of getting to class on time and combating the scourge of ink blots on his trousers."

All eyes were on Arthur. It was impossible to avoid a glance when they were coming from every direction.

"And you, Herr Browning," Eames continued. "I am glad a man with your intimate understanding of music is in charge of selecting the performances at the Royal Academy. Your knowledge continues to humble and inspire me. Just the other day, at the rehearsal, you stood up at the coda and said--I'll never forget it--'I really do think the finale should sound happier. More energetic. Should make people want to dance and celebrate.' Yes, because the end of a war really is like an orgasm, isn't it?" A collective gasp went round the table. "But even after an orgasm, one has to rest."

"Herr Eames, sit down," the Emperor said solemnly. Eames lowered himself to his seat. Browning leaned over to whisper something across the table, to which Saito shook his head.

Arthur had to restrain himself from rising from the table. When dessert and sherry were served, the conversations and sights swam together in a multi-sense soup, and he was aware only of his shame. He remembered the previous night, the enjoyment Eames seemed to be getting out of imagining he was humiliating Arthur. Clearly it was one of the man’s favorite pastimes. It was silly of Arthur to wish he had never come to the Imperial City to study music; the past, was unchangeable, and as a second son his options were limited. He could have studied law or joined the clergy. He imagined himself as a priest, urging others to accept the glory of a God who could give the holy gift of musical genius to such a cruel, venial, silly man as Edward Eames. 

A quartet in another room began the first notes of a vigorous waltz, and the guests were led into the ballroom. Arthur looked carefully to make sure no one was in need of his attention, and he tiptoed down the hallway and exited into an atrium surrounded by marble arcade arches. Dusk was well underway, and the light that pierced the arches was barely deserving of the name; it was a granite-colored light, veined with shadows, and the tapestries on the walls looked like the crawl of an angry red mold. Arthur stepped across the grass and sat down on a bench, anger roiling in his chest and throat. 

_Who is Eames?_ he thought. _Is his talent his power, or is it something else? Would I care if he embarrassed me if he could not conjure up the worlds of the divine, the heavenly and the infernal and those inaccessible even to the spirits of the dead, all with the same materials I use to make the most plodding of waltzes?_

_We cannot both be happy. It is one or the other._

Distant footsteps echoed on stone, and a shadow moved across the wall like the flowing black figure of a bishop. He turned to face the fountain, hoping that the passerby would not notice him.

Instead, the footsteps drew closer, and he became aware that someone was standing behind him.

“Herr Hahnemann, I wished only to apologize. I meant no disrespect.”

Arthur turned around. “Herr Eames, your apology is of no consequence to me,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could muster.

“I spoke the truth. Why is the truth so often cause for offense?” Eames asked loudly, just as a young man chased a giggling young lady across the stone.

“Keep your bloody voice down,” Arthur hissed. “And so the truth is that I am vain and frivolous and without talent?

“I said none of those things,” Eames whispered, leaning closer to him. “You need no one to tell you how brilliant your Purgatorio was. But you’ve perhaps gotten complacent. I would have thought you’d appreciate a little competition.”

Arthur bent so close to Eames that he could practically touch his lips to the other man’s ear. It reminded him of the banquet hall. Their first meeting. The heat that had flooded his center from the moment he saw Eames’ ruddy cheeks and bright gray eyes, before he knew that Eames could only ever be a reminder of everything he himself could never be. “I will not allow these continued insults to stand without consequence, Herr Eames.” He was unable to stem the flow of words now. “I demand formal satisfaction.”

Eames’ eyes widened, and he sprang from the bench. “You’re challenging me to a duel?”

Arthur grimly met his eyes, trying not to betray his horror at his irreversible mistake. “I am.”

Eames nodded repeatedly. He looked nervous. “So then--if I understand the rules correctly--we need seconds to arrange this. I will appoint Yusuf as my second. And you?”

Arthur cringed. During his university years he had been a member of a dueling fraternity. The swordfights he’d participated in had engraved the papery scar beneath his left eye and the rules of dueling in his mind; he ought to know them by now as well as he he knew his prayers and his time signatures. How could he have forgotten about seconds? The role of the second was to negotiate the terms of the duel, to ensure that both participants were behaving honorably and were not jumping into the fight without careful consideration. Any second Arthur chose would be certain to take Eames’s side in the conflict. They would try to reason him out of fighting. What if Eames were wounded? Even if he weren’t killed, what if Arthur shot him in the hand or marred the face that had to pose for portraits and stand before adoring crowds? Eames was a precious commodity. 

“I will go fetch Yusuf from the ballroom,” Eames announced. “Who will you choose?”

Cobb would not do. Eames had practically given him a reason to live. Arthur hated to make a dishonorable choice, a choice who was not his social equal, but he could think of no other who would take his part against Eames. 

“My manservant, Anton,” Arthur said, not daring to meet Eames’s eyes.

Minutes later they reconvened in the courtyard. Eames had a tipsy Yusuf in tow, and Arthur sat on the bench he’d sat on earlier, Anton standing behind him. Yusuf whispered, or attempted to whisper, something to Eames which sounded to Arthur like “What’s a second supposed to do again?”

Anton cleared his throat. “May I speak, Herr Hahnemann?” he asked in a soft monotone.

“Of course, Anton.”

“As I understand it, Herr Eames,” he said, turning to face Eames, “since you are the party who issued the first offense, it falls to you to offer Herr Hahnemann a formal apology.”

Eames snorted. “Did _Herr Hahnemann_ tell you that I already tried that? _Herr Hahnemann_ is determined to take umbrage at everything I say or do regardless, so I’m no longer inclined to keep groveling at his feet.”

Yusuf leaned in and loudly whispered to Eames again. “Imagine what a duel could do for your image!” He sounded almost excited about the prospect. “No one would ever see you as a coward again. They’d see you as dangerous and manly, a real loose cannon.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging us to reconcile, Yusuf?” Eames asked mildly.

“Reconciliation might also be a…good idea.” Yusuf sounded much more blasé about reconciliation.

“Are you also determined to duel, Herr Hahnemann?” asked Anton.

Arthur lifted his chin and folded his hands in his lap. “I am.”

“Will you name the stakes?”

 _Pistols_ , a foolish mind-voice cried. 

_Death._

“You can’t kill him, Herr Hahnemann!” Yusuf called. His voice rebounded off the darkening stones. “The entire continent would hate you.”

“I am not going to kill him,” Arthur said harshly. “The thought never even crossed my mind. Do you agree, Herr Eames, that we will fight with swords? To…” He paused.

“First blood would be most prudent in this case,” Anton offered.

“To first blood,” Arthur affirmed. “At eight tomorrow morning.”

The other three men looked flabbergasted. “Tomorrow?” Yusuf began haltingly. “But your performance—“

Eames waved his hand nonchalantly. “Don’t worry, Yusuf. Better to get this silly thing over with as soon as possible.”

Anton hesitated before speaking again. “Then we all agree? A duel with swords, at eight o’clock?” He pulled a roll of parchment from inside the breast of his jacket. “Then I will ask you gentlemen to sign your names to this parchment.” He handed Arthur the scroll, a pen and ink. Arthur unscrewed the lid of the inkpot, dipped the pen twice and signed his name in a jagged garland.

“Won’t it be a problem if someone finds it?” Yusuf asked anxiously.

“I’m not concerned,” Eames said. “The Emperor favors me. He loves my compositions, and he has made allowances for me before.” Arthur rolled his eyes, not caring who saw it this time.

They agreed that the duel would not be fought on the palace grounds. Yusuf knew of a grazing meadow a mile north of the city frequented by a dense overcoat of fog and surrounded by a horseshoe of forest into which it would be easy to disappear should complications arise. Eames objected to the location, but Yusuf’s arguments convinced him. After they had all signed their names and shaken hands, Eames returned to the ballroom to find Robert, while Arthur excused himself to the Emperor and Browning and retired to his quarters.

He pulled a black lacquer case from beneath his bed. His epee had rested for years, but he worked it slowly out of its groove of green satin, remembering how well his hand had molded to the handle. A bullet of white light traced the blade’s spine as he tipped it upwards. _How I’ve missed this,_ he thought.

§

Arthur led his horse into the meadow and could hardly see his own hand through the mist. He stroked his sword case and tried to will away the effects of his lack of sleep.

 _What do I have to worry about?_ he thought, trying to console himself. _I'm not out for blood, only to teach that insolent child a lesson. I will cut his shoulder; he will bleed; and he'll have learned never to insult me again._

Arthur was so lost in thought that it took him some time to realize that it must have been minutes since the distant church bells struck the hour. 

"Any sign of them, Anton?" he asked. Anton scanned the gravel road leading up to the pasture. 

"No, sir." Arthur pulled his watch out of his pocket and let out a slow breath. "It's eight fifteen. This is exceedingly ill-mannered of them," said Anton. 

The bloody cur has gone back on his word, Arthur thought. He shook the dew from the toe of his boot and paced back and forth over the spongy ground, trampling little-flowered weeds. When he stepped in a pile of manure he cursed; Anton rushed to wipe his heel with a handkerchief, but Arthur waved him away.

The clock chimed on the half hour. "Anton, let's go." 

Arthur leapt atop his horse. "I intend to find Herr Eames, wherever he is, and embarrass him the way he has once again embarrassed me. Perhaps I will challenge him to fight again, and this time I swear I will do him the sort of harm that cannot be healed with a bandage." 

Anton's horse caught up with his. "Is that wise, sir?" he asked. "Perhaps it would be more prudent to let Herr Eames go." 

"You must understand, Anton," said Arthur over the crunch of hooves on gravel, "the kind of damage that Herr Eames does when he is allowed to say whatever he wishes unchecked. The other day he insulted an officer of the court. He offends the sensibilities of respectable people on a daily basis. And yet his behavior is accepted, even rewarded. Tell me, is that fair?" 

"No, sir," Anton agreed. 

Eames was nowhere to be found at the palace or on the palace grounds. Arthur bid goodbye to Anton there, urging him to take the day off; then he rode into town, where Eames also kept his own residence. 

He visited a tavern he knew Eames frequented. When he walked through the door the innkeeper set down the beer stein he was drying and fixed him with a cold glare that informed him he was a stranger. The few other men and women dining on brown bread and pickled cabbage also turned to give full-body appraisals to the man in the clean white ruffled ascot and shining boots. 

"Good morning, good sir." He tried to sound kindly. "Have you seen Herr Eames this morning?"

"That depends why you want to know," the man said stiffly in a rural accent not too different from the one native to the region where Arthur had grown up. 

"Herr Eames owes me a debt," Arthur said.

The innkeeper snorted. "You'll have to get in line then. Herr Eames isn't well-known for paying off his debts, is he?" A few of his customers laughed. 

"Oh, do lay off of Eames, Conrad," cried a woman in a plain brown dress to which length had been added using a different, coarser fabric. "He's a good man. He came and played the violin to cheer up my Sophie when she was ill, and he even bought the medicine for her."

"Yes, I'm sure buying medicine for sick children is what's gotten old Graybeard on his case, Teresa," Conrad scoffed. 

The woman began to voice her objections again, and Arthur moved toward the door. "Thank you," he mouthed, waving awkwardly. 

Arthur knew that Eames's permanent home was several streets away because out of mere curiosity he had sent Anton one night to follow him. The neighborhood was inhabited mostly by civil servants; the homes, with pale brick facades and iron verandas, were not luxurious, but they tended to be filled with foreign art and well-crafted furniture, and the streets were well lit at night. 

No one answered the door, but he tried the handle and found it unlocked. 

"Herr Eames." His voice echoed as he ascended the stairwell. The parlor was eerily bare; save for a spinnet and one yellow chair with a seat cushion that looked slashed-through, there was no furniture in it. Nor was there art on the walls. Shouldn't Eames's living quarters be full of art? He imagined that there would be enough portraits of Eames on the walls to make the roof beams sag. Perhaps he had not yet moved all of his belongings in. “Herr Eames. Are you here?”

Arthur thought he could hear a creak at the end of the hall. A door being blown open by the wind, no doubt. He peeked into an utterly empty room with the drapes drawn, then moved towards the bedchamber. The creak repeated, and Arthur realized to his shock that it was not a creak but a human voice groaning something incomprehensible.

Arthur hastened to the bedchamber. To his horror, there was someone in the bed. The person’s face was buried in the pillow, his or her body contorted in a shape that suggested pain rather than sleep. 

“Eames?” he asked.

“Go away, I don’t have any more money,” he moaned. 

“I’m not here for your money.” He ran to the bedside and leaned over Eames. Eames did not look like himself: his eyelids were purple slugs, and his grimy face was swollen to several times its normal size. Arthur drew the sheet back slowly and gasped at the damask of bruises on Eames’s skin, red and purple and black. Worst of all, the elephantine right arm that clung to Eames’ side like a shy child appeared to have an extra bend between the hand and the elbow. There were bandages on his skin, but he had clearly not received enough medical attention. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

“I got myself beaten up so I wouldn’t have to fight your duel,” Eames rasped. His mouth opened into a bloody smile full of black holes. 

“Now is not the time to jest,” Arthur said, as gently as he could manage. “Tell me later. I’m going to fetch a doctor.”

“No. No doctors,” Eames insisted. He made a feeble attempt to turn to face Arthur, but the effort was excruciating. “Word of this—ow—word of this must not get out.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Arthur drew the blinds closed.

Arthur returned shortly afterward with the doctor and the bonesetter in tow. He waited outside the door while the doctor administered laudanum and the bonesetter wrenched and tugged. The effects of the sedative had not yet set in, and Arthur had to cover his ears when Eames screamed.

“Will he be all right?” Arthur asked the men anxiously after they had finished their ministrations.

“His arm will take a month at least to heal,” said the bonesetter.

Arthur paid them thirty florins each; they took their supplies and left.

There was no chair in the bedroom, so he leaned against the windowsill. Eames’s eyes were closed, but he continued to groan, and Arthur couldn’t tell if he were asleep or awake. From life at the palace Arthur had gotten used to standing perfectly still, like a cast-iron hat rack with eyes, but his sleepless night kept announcing itself to his brain and his muscles and he found himself longing for someplace more satisfying than the windowsill to perch.

“Arthur,” Eames at last squeezed out. “Will you tell me a story?”

“In need of something to put you to sleep?” Arthur said dryly.

“No. I don’t think sleep is an option,” Eames said. “I need something to take my mind off of the pain.”

Arthur’s legs were threatening to collapse. He slid down the wall into a crouching position.

”Come sit on the bed, you fool,” Eames laughed. Reluctantly Arthur moved around the bed and sat on the corner diagonally across from the pillow whereon rested Eames’s battered head.

Arthur smoothed out the front of his jacket and began to tell the story.

“About fifty years ago, in this very city, there lived a young student named Girolamo. He came from a good family, and he had a home, a horse, clothes without holes, and food in his larder. His school marks were not exceptional, but he worked hard, and he knew how to ingratiate himself with professors and fellow students, so he was practically guaranteed a job of some standing once he graduated. He had but one problem. He believed he lacked a soul.” He paused, listening for some signal from Eames. There was none but his labored breathing, the sound of air being pushed through bellows.

“Shall I continue?” Arthur asked.

“If you’re going to keep asking that every ten seconds, then no,” Eames retorted.

“Very well then. Girolamo believed he lacked a soul, and he became obsessed with the thought of acquiring one. One night, as he lay awake, tossing and turning, the desire became strong enough to push him out of bed and lead him blindly down an alley, where he found a small, locked door. He had always avoided this alley, for he had heard rumors that this door opened into the home of a sorcerer. But tonight he was desperate. He knocked thrice at the door, and on the third knock an old man answered. You should not be here, my boy, the sorcerer said. It is not with a glad heart that I inflict my gifts upon others. But Girolamo would not listen to reason. I was born without a soul, he told the old man. After the old man listened to Girolamo’s story, he said, I can give you what you ask. But I cannot create a soul for you out of ether. Only God can create souls. You must steal one from one already born. Is there one whose soul you wish to take? Girolamo barely had to think to answer. Yes, he said...”

When the story was concluded, Arthur held his breath. Was Eames asleep? Was his mind’s orchestra occupying him, spinning him a sultry passacaglia, a chipper minuet? For a moment Arthur even feared he might be dead.

“You shouldn’t tell stories like that,” Eames whispered at last, startling Arthur. “It’s not good for your reputation as an utter bore.”

“So you found it...entertaining?”

Eames paused. Arthur watched him anxiously; it was work for him to peel his parched lips apart. _He needs water,_ Arthur thought. _Is there a pitcher in this entire house?_

“It was...frankly, Arthur, it was marvelous. Dark and strange and blasphemous.”

“Blasphemous?” Arthur asked. “I intended no blasphemy. You must understand, I think up stories mainly to entertain children, and I use whatever will keep their attention. They love stories of witches and magic, and such elements work well to caution them against pride and untoward curiosity.” 

Eames laughed. “That? That was no children’s story.” His lilting speech was quickly fractured by a hacking cough. “You know, you really ought to admit that you’re every bit as debauched as I am. You’ll have much more fun that way.”

Then his head slumped to the side, and his mouth fell open, and he said no more.

§

“How are you feeling?” Arthur asked when Eames had finally groaned awake. He had found a cracked jug and filled it at the water pump; now he was dipping an rag into it, dabbing Eames’s forehead and neck. The bruises and cuts tightened Eames’s skin, made slight movements agonizing, and Arthur winced in sympathy whenever the gentle pressure of the cloth was not quite gentle enough.

“Like one of Meyerburg’s beds after he’s entertained a group of his lady students,” Eames slurred. 

“Glad to see your taste for vulgarity hasn’t been dulled,” said Arthur.

Eames closed his bloodshot eyes. “You, Herr Hahnemann, are a fine one to talk about vulgarity. I know you were trying to trap me with that charming whore. He told me your plan, told me about your history together.”

Eames, groggy and purple, was far too pitiable a target for Arthur’s anger to stick to, and he changed the subject.

“What’s become of Yusuf, anyway?” 

Eames’s brow furrowed. He tried to raise his hand to his face, then remembered that it was in a sling across his chest. “I don’t actually know. I was to meet him at the field at eight o’clock. I hope he wasn’t waylaid by unsavory types. The way I was.”

“Unsavory types like this Greybeard?”

Eames began to chuckle but found it too painful to finish. “How do you know about Greybeard?”

“I’ve also heard that you have a tendency to...misplace funds. My research is always quite thorough. So.” Arthur flexed his fingers. “Do you care to explain how you found yourself in this state, or shall I just assume you really did dread the slash of my epee so much that you had yourself beaten to a pulp rather than face it?”

“You may want to pull up a chair. It’s a rather long story.”

“Do you see any chairs here?” Arthur glanced around the room. “I suppose you’re lucky your creditors left you the bed.”

Eames’s mouth twisted wickedly. “I had it bolted to the floor for exactly that reason.” 

“So your mind does contain a speck of prudence,” Arthur smiled.

“Only where matters of the bedroom are concerned.” Eames’s eye flinched. 

Arthur chose not to respond to him. “Do you have a pitcher?”

“Most likely, no,” said Eames.

“You need clean linens and food,” proclaimed Arthur. He thought for a moment. “My home is only one neighborhood away. I’ll fetch some food and linens and a pitcher that isn’t broken, and I’ll visit the pump again. I won’t be an hour.” He laid his hand on Eames’s shoulder to press the words into his body, along with some unspoken ones. _Whatever has passed between us, I will not abandon a man in need._

“I’ll be right here,” Eames said brightly.

§

When Arthur returned from his apartment, balancing fruit and bread and a full pitcher of water, and having sent a messenger to fetch Anton from the palace, Eames was not, in fact, lying in his bed.

Arthur searched every corner and crevice of Eames’s home. His heart hammered in his chest; images of Greybeard and his cronies, men with pistols and clubs and little regard for musical genius, had set up camp in his mind. He expected the worst.

Ruefully he remembered the moment he’d considered killing Eames. Pistols. To the death. Had he actually been serious? Perhaps. But he knew beyond a doubt that he could not aim a gun at that face. Could not, with a quick metallic puncture barely thicker than the dot on an I, convert that sublime mind into a mere thing. To be treated like a smelly grotesque inconveience, hefted and drained and sealed up in a filthy cave. At times it was torture just to know that Eames existed. But there was no joy in seeing him lying bloody and bruised in that bed. He wanted to touch Eames’s hot cheek with the back of his hand, smooth his hair back like Arthur’s mother had done when he’d had a fever and the priest hovered in the bedroom door.

He was vaulted out of his reverie by three sharp knocks to the door downstairs. A quarter note and two eighth notes; Anton’s signal.

Arthur rushed downstairs and flung open the door.

“What in God’s name—“Arthur cried, incredulous. Anton was supporting the slumped-over form of a man, dirty and bruised.

“I found him leaning against the wall of a house, sir,” Anton explained. “He’d tried to walk, but couldn’t get any further. People thought he was a beggar. They were throwing coins at his feet.”

“He wouldn’t let me pick any of the money up, either,” Eames hissed. “Can you believe that?”

Arthur was too furious to look Eames in the eye. “Anton, help me get him upstairs.”

Arthur grabbed Eames by the feet while Anton supported his back, careful not to disturb the arm in the sling.

“You can’t expect me to miss my own concert,” Eames whined, his head bobbing to one side as they hoisted him up the stairs.

“It’s tomorrow, you brainless idiot!” said Arthur.

They got Eames settled back in bed. Anton filled a pap boat with water and tilted it into Eames’s mouth, urging him to drink. He sat up, but still spluttered. Arthur, meanwhile, stomped back and forth, rubbing his hands together briskly. 

“I swear, if you try anything like that again—“ In a burst of rage he seized the curtains, yanking them down in one attempt, and the room was bathed with blinding light. He held the fabric in front of Eames; making sure that Eames was watching, he tore a strip from the edge and pulled it tautly in both hands. “If you try anything like that again, I will tie you to this bloody bed. God _damn_ it.”

When the curse left his lips, Anton glared at him in ill-disguised horror.

When Anton left again to retrieve chairs, bedding and braziers from Arthur’s house, both Arthur and Eames maintained a tense silence.

At last Eames broke the silence. “Please, you must understand,” he said softly. “You may think I take a flippant attitude towards everything. But this concerto is...I’ve put my entire being into this. I’ve done things no one has ever done before with music, and to have to miss seeing it finally come to life after all of these rehearsals would be terrible. And who will conduct it?” He raised himself on his elbow. “Nor can I miss the opportunity to see the expression on Browning’s face when he sees the surprise I have in store for him.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “A surprise.”

Eames’s lips snapped back from a broad smile; it was too painful for the bruised and stretched skin to sustain. “But the surprise can’t happen now. There were supplies I needed, and now I can’t get them.”

Arthur deliberated for a moment. What kind of damage was Eames planning to do to his reputation now? Then curiosity got the better of him. He sighed. “I will help you. I will help you execute your little surprise, and, if you can stand it, I will conduct your piece. I have attended all of the rehearsals. I have studied the score. I think I can manage a passable approximation of your plans for the concerto.” 

Eames bolted upright in bed, then gasped in pain. Arthur rushed to his side and, hand on his shoulder, eased him back down. “You would do that for me?” he wheezed. Arthur nodded. “Arthur, you are the dearest friend I’ve ever had.”

Arthur looked down at his lap, shaking his head. “You have no idea how untrue that is.”

“No,” insisted Eames. “It’s true.”

”It really isn’t,” said Arthur.

§

There were all manner of ways one could sabotage a performance like this. One could give the wrong musical cues to the musicians: encourage volume from the wrong sections, conveniently forget to signal to the percussion when to come in. And Arthur knew these musicians well. Knew that in the face of a suspicious change of plans some of them would play the piece as they’d rehearsed it and others would follow the conductor blindly, trusting that it was part of Eames’s genius vision. The result would be a discombobulated canon, phrases sliding on top of each other wantonly. Dislocated, jarring, ugly.

Arthur wished his mind wouldn’t dwell on sabotage. But he was angry. Angry that Eames had terrified him by vanishing, angry that he even cared that Eames lived or died. Angry that Eames was storing the costumes—yes, costumes—for this performance at the home of Arthur’s own former lover, whose home Arthur paid for, whose loyalty Arthur had hoped to use to bring about Eames’s downfall. Everything Arthur had tried to do to show Eames his proper place had backfired, and yes, it made him a bit furious.

Once again Robert greeted Arthur as if he didn’t know him at all. Arthur expected no more.

“I’ve come to fetch whatever Herr Eames has been keeping here,” Arthur said stiffly.

Robert nodded and opened the door reluctantly, then led Arthur to a black trunk that was both deep and wide. It had wheels, but Arthur knew he wouldn’t be able to cart it down the stairs alone.

Although he balked at taking up any more of Robert’s time than he had to, he required his help to get the trunk outside. After he and Robert lowered it to the ground, Robert turned and began to walk briskly back to the door.

“I did try, you know,” Arthur called out to him.

Robert turned back around and took a few steps back towards Arthur. “I suppose it’s not your fault,” he said softly. “You couldn’t help who you fell in love with.”

Arthur felt all the breath evacuate his lungs. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Robert looked as if he were trying to calm himself before explaining something to a particularly dense child. “I know that you’re in love with Eames. I can’t imagine it’s much of a secret, either. The way you look at him? Everyone has to know.”

Something hot and livid choked off Arthur’s vision like a fast-growing bramble. “What does he think of me?”

Robert shrugged. “Don’t know. I don’t believe he returns your feelings, though. I did tell him I thought you might be watching us, so we decided we’d give you a bit of a show in case you were. You did see, didn’t you? The jacket? That was my idea.”

Arthur knew his mouth had dropped open. “You betrayed me.”

Cold anger flashed in Robert’s eyes. “And what did you think you did to me? I loved you. You knew that. And you always hated that I was a whore, claimed I was better than that, but you had no reservations about asking me to be a whore when it suited your twisted needs.” He took a step back. “I despise you, Arthur. You are selfish and hypocritical. And it is no wonder that your music is so soulless, since you have no human feelings in you.” With that he strode back toward the door.

Arthur stood in the street, thoroughly numb. A carriage driver had to swerve around him, cursing, and a horse dropped dung not a foot away from him. _Serves me right,_ he thought. Any serious thoughts of sabotage flew away. The possibility of proving Robert right once again made his stomach churn.

For awhile he had tried to suppress a daft hope that Eames’s stunt with the jacket in the hunting shack was some sign that Eames harbored a secret regard for him. That, mingled with his desire to embarrass Arthur, was a desire to possess Arthur. But no. Of course not. It was a trick, like everything else Eames did.

He waited to hail a carriage. He knew he deserved to find one that was headed for Hell, although he wondered if he was not already there.

§

“The costumes are here!” cried one of the seamstresses, greeting Arthur at the backstage door on opening night. Musicians clogged the narrow passageway, anxiously awaiting the black trunk’s journey forth.

“Let me at it!” Mathilde, the head seamstress, called, pulling a key out of a pocket. “I do hope he knew what he was doing.”

“Have you seen them before?” Arthur asked Mathilde, who was jiggling the key in the rusted lock.

“No,” said Mathilde. “He insisted on keeping it secret. He only let a couple of friends help him with it.” Arthur had considered picking the lock to see the costumes, but curiosity, like most of his other appetites, had taken a hit after his encounter with Robert. When he returned to Eames’s house, he’d asked Anton to see to Eames’s care. Arthur himself had skulked in the empty parlor all night. Several times he drifted partway off to sleep standing up and, in the truth-warping space between dream and waking, he though he heard impossible voices that reminded him of acts so dark he could not even form the words to describe them. Once in the grainy darkness he even thought he saw a human shape moving towards him, composed of twisting fluid lines he remembered well. _It isn’t her,_ he whispered.

Mathilde gasped as she turned around, holding in one hand a stream of coppery fabric with a large stiff cup-shaped part dangling at the end, and in the other an object made of thick paper that resembled a wheel.

“That’s all very well, but what are the costumes supposed to be?” one of the cellists asked impatiently.

“Wait, wait, there’s a note in here.” Mathilde fished it out and stared at it for a moment.

“What does it say, though?”

Mathilde looked back and forth. “I never learned to read. Someone else will have to do it.” Arthur reached for the piece of paper.

It contained only one word:

_BOOM._

§

“I don’t care what kind of genius Eames is,” Cobb fumed, lifting the costume over his head and shaking out his hair. “I don’t see why it was necessary to have us dress as cannons. I’m going to have a word with him next time I see him. I really believe that wearing that thing on my head threw off my balance and affected my playing. The tiniest things can have a very strong effect on a musician’s performance.”

The change in Cobb since he’d begun performing again was remarkable. He still drank too much, and more often than not he still had that dull, distant look in his eyes. But now he also had periods of lucidity and confidence. Only two months ago he wouldn’t have had nearly so much to say about a cannon costume.

“You were brilliant,” Arthur murmured. “I think it may have been your best performance yet.”

“Maestro, may I have a word?” There was a wave of bowing as Chancellor Browning stepped backstage.

Arthur and Cobb both bowed deeply as well. “You honor us with your presence, as always, Sir,” said Arthur. “Of course.”

Arthur followed Browning into the corridor behind the ready room. In the near-total dark only the very highest and very deepest parts of a face were visible, so Browning’s face was just a constellation of wisps.

“First, I must admit that your conducting of that bizarre piece was commendable,” Browning began, though even that sounded like a warning. Arthur had to agree with him. He had sworn to conduct the concerto as if it were his own piece. Anything less would only reflect poorly on him. And the truth was that he wanted to hear the Iron Concerto again, as Eames had intended it, its moments of plodding doubt and ricocheting mania. It was a jagged and uncertain terrain whose only guide was that golden horsefly of a motif, soaring and zooming and hiding behind burning bushes only to emerge again in a clearing charged with a new purpose: now a patient fleck of redemption. It was a thing of torment turned miraculously into a precious beacon on the sea.

“Thank you,” said Arthur.

“However, the Emperor and I both had some concerns. Though we are to understand that those costumes were Herr Eames’s idea, your complicity in ensuring their use was-- troubling, to say the least. And we had no reason before to consider you a troublemaker.”

Arthur bowed his head in contrition. “I am deeply sorry, Your Excellency.”

“Your apology is accepted.” Browning meted out the words slowly. “We had hoped, of course, that you would be a positive influence on Herr Eames, and that his more maladaptive behaviors would not rub off on a man of your moral fiber. Please, in the future, do not give us any reason to believe that the latter is the case.”

Arthur dug his nails into his palm. So Browning was blaming not Eames, but Arthur for not keeping Eames in line?

“In the future, I will ensure that he is kept in check. If I can help it,” Arthur forced out.

“Good,” said Browning. “By the way, the Emperor wishes you to know that he is planning a revival of your Purgatorio in September. It is an appropriate piece to herald in the fall, don’t you agree?”

Arthur’s throat tightened. “Surely there is something else that could be performed? Something by Molinari or Leininger? I’ve long felt that Susskind was due for a revival.”

“As always, Maestro, you are far too modest,” Browning countered.

Arthur became vaguely aware of a disturbance in the direction of the stage. There were high-pitched shrieks and the stomping of feet, and both he and Browning rushed to investigate. They followed the throng of people moving towards the dress circle. Arthur could just make out someone screaming “Call a doctor! Call a doctor!”

“What’s happened?” Arthur ran down the steps at the side of the stage and pushed his way towards the cluster of people that blocked his view.

“Herr Meyerburg! He fell down, and now it seems he’s dead!” cried one of the servants on the edge of the circle. And indeed the old choirmaster was lying on the ground, wig half off his head, with several young ladies clutching onto various parts of him—his head, a wrist, an ankle—with a fervor with which a single mourner usually cradles the entire body of the dear departed.

§

On returning to Eames’s home, Arthur chucked his cane across the room. The clattering summoned a thin stream of light, followed by Anton, from the upstairs.

“Herr Eames awaits you. He wishes eagerly to speak with you.”

Arthur scowled at Anton. “Tell him he can eagerly wait for as long as he likes. I’m not coming. As soon as I hire someone to care for him for the next two weeks, you and I are leaving here.”

Anton came close enough so that Arthur could see his dark blue eyes framed by their stubby whitish lashes. He looked puzzled. “But sir. With all due respect, Herr Eames seems genuinely fond of you. He told me that, in spite of all the misunderstandings between the two of you, that he considers you a friend.”

“Does he.” Arthur said bitterly.

Anton blinked slowly. “He asked me to tell him things about you.”

Arthur laughed without humor. “Oh. I’m sure he did. What did he ask?”

“He wanted to know...rather boring things, to be honest. He asked me your mother’s name, and your birthday, and whether you slept on the left or the right side of the bed, and how you take your tea.”

“And you told him?” Arthur asked, exasperated.

“I did not think that information was classified, sir.” Anton said repentantly.

“Well, I can only hope that he doesn’t use employ his dazzling creativity in using any of that information against me,” Arthur said. The acridity had left his voice; he was unable to stay too angry with Anton, whom he trusted well. 

“Sir.” Anton rushed to catch up with him as he stalked away. “I mean no disrespect, but...have you ever considered that Herr Eames’s intentions towards you, while mischievous, may not be entirely malicious?”

“He’s won you over, Anton,” Arthur closed his eyes and smiled. “I can’t believe it. Anton, you may go home. I will take care of Eames myself.”

Arthur trod into Eames’s room, finding that the lamp was snuffed out.

“Anton, is that you?” Eames called out. His voice crackled.

“No, it’s me. I have dismissed Anton.” Arthur struck a match and relit the lamp. “There are things we need to talk about, Eames.”

“I’m sure there are. Let me guess. You interpreted the cannon costumes as an attempt to humiliate you personally, and now you’re itching to smother me with a pillow. Haven’t you learned, Arthur, that not everything I do is aimed at humiliating you?” Eames asked.

“Browning blamed me for failing to keep you in line,” Arthur said dully.

“Really.” Eames chewed it over for a moment. “But you’re Browning’s darling. I thought you could do no wrong in his eyes.”

“He thinks your mischief has rubbed off on me.”

Eames clicked his tongue. “If only he knew how resistant you really are to letting me rub off on you. I meant what I said earlier, though. I do consider you a friend.”

Arthur was exhausted again. He balanced at the very edge of the bed, trying to make the least possible amount of contact between his body and the mattress. Nevertheless he teetered and nearly fell to the floor.

“You’re falling asleep standing up. Would you just get in the fucking bed?” Eames demanded. “I’m not going to do anything to you. Don’t worry.”

The thought of being horizontal, of actually sleeping, far outweighed any coherent doubts about Eames’s intentions. Arthur slipped his shoes off, peeled the covers back, and lowered himself onto the mattress.

Eames smelled of dried blood and liniment, and he needed a bath. But it was still bearable to lie next to him, and it didn’t distract Arthur from his steady descent into sleep. In that liminal state, he felt soft fingers at the back of his neck, just resting at first, then beginning to stroke the fine hairs there. He wasn’t sure if they were real or imagined, but they felt so good that he didn't care one bit.

§

The first thing Arthur thought the next morning, after disentangling the hand that had wandered into his hair, was that it wouldn’t do to let Eames stay in this barren house.

With Anton’s help, he bundled Eames into a carriage and they rode to his home. Christina, the maid, had already prepared a guest room for him, and they settled him into bed while Eames asked a hundred questions about all of the paintings on the walls and the furnishings in the room. Before noon, he had named and given a personality to each of the flowers on the brocade bedcover, tried to convince Christina that he could read fortunes in tea leaves—“I see a bear, yes, a very big bear, I think it means you are going to marry a hairy man”—and played several one-handed games of whist with Anton, Arthur hovering nearby to ensure that no money changed hands. He trusted Anton, but Eames had strange effects on people.

After they had all eaten lunch in the guest room, with Eames holding court as usual, and Anton and Christina had cleared away all the trays, Eames asked Arthur for a piano.

“A very small piano that can sit on the bed, you mean?” Arthur asked. “Because that’s the only way you’re getting to a piano. You need to rest.”

“I need to write music,” Eames said crossly. “Unless you’ll be my hands for me.”

Arthur looked at him. Eames’s fingertips were twitching inside the sling, as if he were playing an invisible piano.

“I will be your hands,” Arthur agreed.

It became a routine. Eames lay on the couch wrapped in blankets, furiously scribbling music with his weak left hand and waving it at Arthur to come fetch it so that Arthur could play it for him on the piano and Eames could shout corrections.

 _I am allowing him to treat me like a secretary,_ nagged the voice in Arthur’s mind.

Submitting his hands and his mind to Eames’s music completely felt like a renunciation of his own being as a composer. It was as if Eames’s spirit were moving through him, thick and strong, knocking aside all of his desires.

I ought to accept that I am nothing compared to him, Arthur thought. Destroying him will not change that. What he has written already is immortal. The world could only hate me for hindering him. I may as well try to be liked, or at least tolerated, for helping. The sentiment was a bitter spoonful to swallow. At least Arthur got to be useful. He remembered when he was a tiny boy and the milkmaid would let him crank the handle of the butter churn. Even at that young age, straining on tiptoe to channel all of his strength to his skinny arms, there was a joy in subordinating his body to a higher purpose, becoming flexible, mindless, hollow as a house.

The feeling of Eames’s hands squeezing his shoulder now and again brought him back to himself. Oddly, he found he didn’t mind being there.

§

Yusuf came by one day to visit Eames while he and Arthur were in the parlor. “What in God’s name happened to you that day?” Eames cried when Yusuf walked in. “I thought bandits had gotten you.”

Yusuf looked down sheepishly. “I was taking the long way around town, and I saw a fascinating insect, of a species that was, as far as I knew, as yet unknown to man. I had to collect a sample, so I went back to the apothecary to fetch a glass jar and some chloroform. And I caught it! It was, indeed, a new species. And I think they’re going to name it after me.”

Eames snorted. “That’s a lie. You were with Ariadne, weren’t you?”

Yusuf’s eyes darted away, and he was silent.

“Ha! I knew it. Well, I’m glad at least one of us has had some luck at romance.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Yusuf. “Are you courting someone?”

Eames sighed dramatically. “Arthur doesn’t believe that I love him.”

Arthur glared at him. “You’re only using me because my hands work.”

Yusuf shrugged. “Well, isn’t that mostly what love is anyway?” He took a delicately painted china cup from Christina, who continued to look shyly at him.

“I like your cane, sir,” she said softly and hurriedly. “It looks to be excellent craftsmanship. Do you have a lot of canes, sir? Do you like wood or metal better? Myself, I like metal. It’s...smoother.”

“Don’t even think about it, Christina,” Eames said good-naturedly. “He’s engaged.” Christina frowned and ducked away into the kitchen.

“Such a charming girl, though,” Yusuf sighed. Arthur shot him a disapproving glance. “Yes. Speaking of my engagement, to my fiancee, whom I very much love,” he said pointedly in Arthur’s direction, “we have set a date. We are marrying on August the ninth.”

“Only eight days before Arthur’s birthday!” Eames beamed.

“Nine.”

Eames rolled his eyes. “I’m not a mathematician, you know.”

“How do you manage to count the beats in a bar again?” Arthur teased.

Yusuf leaned back in his chair and slurped slightly at his tea. “You two like each other? I’m shocked! Oh, and before I forget, I have news from the Royal Academy. They’ve found a replacement for Herr Meyerburg, may Heaven rest his oversexed soul.”

“Who?” Arthur asked. He had once had a faint hope of being appointed to the position himself, but it evaporated, and he was less than sad to see it go.

“You’ll never believe it,” Yusuf said. “Professor Miles is coming out of retirement.”

“Miles,” said Eames. “The name sounds familiar. Where have I heard it?”

“He’s an occasional composer, but he’s primarily a teacher of music and composition at the Royal Academy of Marchia,” said Yusuf. “Brilliant man. He used to be the Emperor’s Choirmaster, but he retired from all work when his daughter died under mysterious circumstances. His daughter was married to Cobb, the violinist. You know him.”

“Yes. Of course. Arthur, what’s wrong?” Eames asked gently. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

§

Arthur’s fingers were beginning to cramp, and Eames’s attention was beginning to wander; he was crumpling up pieces of ledger paper and throwing them at Arthur’s head like a schoolboy.

“If you break anything in here, I will flay you,” Arthur warned, scribbling a correction on one of Eames’s sheets.

“I’m tired of music. Can’t we do something else?”

Arthur turned around on the piano bench. Eames was plucking at the tassels on his blanket.

“This was your idea, you do remember,” said Arthur.

Suddenly Eames swung his feet onto the silken carpet, and Arthur was seeing his body vertical for the first time since the afternoon a week ago when Anton had caught him escaping. It struck Arthur how much thinner he looked, although Arthur and his servants had done their best to ensure that Eames was eating enough. Some of his bruises had faded to purple; some were still black; and a stitched-up gash still wended its way across his forehead like a toothy crooked mouth.

“I’m much better now, Arthur,” Eames said. “I can walk now.”

“Are you so sure?” Arthur asked.

Eames sprung to his feet. “Sometimes I walk around the house while you’re all asleep,” he said slyly. “I’m very quiet.” 

“Excellent,” Arthur said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“But,” Eames said, limping over to Arthur, “if I can walk, it means I can also kneel.” He fell to his knees before Arthur, and Arthur saw him wince—he’d clearly been kicked in the legs and the shins numerous times.

“Get up, will you?” Arthur begged. “What are you doing?”

”You’ve been so good to me,” Eames whispered. “I just wanted to return the favor. Make you feel good. Please? Can I?”

Arthur let his eyes twitch closed. Eames slid his hands onto Arthur’s knees.

“I’m going to take your pants down now.” Eames hooked his fingers around the buttons of Arthur’s trousers and undid them. “Remember how we were going to do this? What happened?”

“Is this the time to talk about that?” Arthur sighed. His elbow accidentally smashed the piano keys, resulting in a tuneless clang.

“I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you,” Eames pulled Arthur’s pants down in slow, even intervals, looking up at him with hopeful eyes. His eyes were still rimmed with bruises that made the gray of his irises even more striking by contrast. “I didn’t know why you decided you hated me when you found out who I was, what changed your mind.”

 _I think I hated you more because you found out who I was,_ Arthur thought but could not say aloud.

“I’m sorry, Eames.” Arthur rested his hand in Eames’s disheveled hair like a blessing. He hoped the apology would cover all of it.

Eames pushed the pants aside and lifted Arthur’s ankle. He raked his fingertips up and down the shin covered by a light gray stocking, then moved them to the back to stroke his calf. Eames bent down to press a kiss to the top of Arthur’s foot, which made Arthur draw back involuntarily. He regained his composure, which was fortunate, because it became clear that Eames was also planning to kiss the knob of his ankle and the arch of his foot and all the way up to the place where the stocking ended and the bare skin of his knee began. Eames wriggled his tongue beneath the edge of the stocking and licked his way across the slope of Arthur’s knee.

When Arthur’s knee had been sufficiently licked, Eames journeyed upwards, via the pale, sensitive inseam of his thigh, pushing Arthur’s underpants up toward his hips as he went. He flattened his tongue against Arthur’s thigh and licked, long, slow, wet strokes. And though Arthur’s breath was getting shaky, it was Eames who was beginning to whimper. Arthur could feel the buzzing from Eames’s lips shoot through his own body. The wiry hairs on Arthur’s legs were soaked from sweat and from the rasp of Eames’s devoted tongue, still wetly caressing the tender place where his legs met. Or where they would normally meet when they were not spread out wantonly over a piano bench for a handsome man’s hot, plush mouth to lick and suck at them at his leisure.

“God, Eames,” Arthur begged hoarsely. “What are you doing?”

Eames pulled away with a soft slurping noise. “The intent,” he said, “is to bathe you with kisses until you moisten your pants like a girl.”

Arthur felt an uncharted place inside his chest quiver. But he hated the thought of being so exposed before Eames. Of giving Eames the permission to dispense pleasure, which also meant that Eames could take it away at will.

“I-I’d rather not,” he stammered.

”You don’t like this?” Eames looked wounded.

“It’s not that,” said Arthur. “It’s just that—I’d rather—take you.”

Eames rose slowly to his feet, and Arthur felt the absence of his heat right away. Arthur feared Eames was offended, but he looked back at Arthur with a wry smile.

“You want my arse, is that it?” Eames spread his body across the couch and braced his good forearm against the scrolling arm. “You can take it, then.” His eyes gleamed with mischief. With lust.

"One moment." Arthur steadied himself and walked into his bedchamber. He wiggled open the drawer in the table next to his bed and fished around for a small bottle of oil. 

_This is a terrible idea_ , he thought as his fingers closed around the bottle. _It's not too late to tell him to put his clothes back on and pretend none of this ever happened._

But when Arthur emerged from the chamber to find Eames still on the couch, knees bent, body a series of lush, muscular right angles, the words died away on his lips.

Arthur knelt on the couch behind Eames and untied the sash of Eames’s gray silk robe—a robe Arthur had bought for him, secretly because of how well it complemented his body and his eyes. Eames shook it off and it trailed down his shoulders like a flow of mercury. Arthur kissed the furrows and dimples of the well-sculpted shoulder (where did a composer get shoulders like that anyway?) and fed two fingers into Eames’s mouth for Eames to lick and suck.

When Arthur’s fingers were wet enough, Arthur spread Eames’s arse and slowly worked a finger into his hole. At that alone Eames arched his back and gasped. Arthur petted his back, still a mosaic of bruising, to calm him down as he stretched Eames open. He added another finger and scissored him open until he felt Eames’s body relax beneath him.

“Yes?” Arthur asked, mouth dampening Eames’s ear. Eames nodded.

Arthur uncapped the bottle and coated his cock with oil, and for good measure he pumped an oil-covered finger inside Eames, once, twice, three times, four times. 

He lined up and brushed his cock a few times over the hole, the way that always made Arthur himself melt open even more for a lover’s cock. Eames sighed, and Arthur pushed in, thrilling at the tight resistance.

Eames began to buck backwards to meet his thrusts. The compound of Arthur’s own movements, and the slide of the tight hole over his cock, was dizzying, and its effects spread to Arthur’s belly, and his eyes, and the tinny drum roll of his heart. He was confused. This man, solid and sighing beneath him, straining feverishly backwards to crush his lips against Arthur’s, was Eames. Who Arthur had never expected would open up his body to anyone. Who would not smile like a pretty child when Arthur complimented his eyes. He still did not know how to reconcile the image of the sharp-tongued fop flitting from admirer to admirer with the truth of the man in his arms, the man who was coming hotly between Arthur’s fingers and groaning out his name.

 _Eames_ , Arthur had to say when he came inside him, just to remind himself who was beneath him.

§

The next morning, Arthur woke in his bed with his nose smashed into Eames’s shoulder. The velvet blankets were wadded beneath their sticky bodies, and someone—hopefully Arthur—had locked the door.

“Eames,” he said again. Again, to remind himself.

Eames turned over. “It’s you,” he said, breaking into one of those wide, jagged grins. “Come here.” He threw his arm across Arthur’s back and pulled him close, tucking Arthur’s head under his chin.

“Just a moment.” Despite Eames’s protestations, Arthur wiggled free of Eames’s grasp, pulled a robe off the finial and tied it on. “I need to consult my calendar...I have a vague feeling there is somewhere I needed to be this morning, but I can’t quite figure out where.” He darted into his dim study. The tall mahogany-wood clock struck the half hour.

He pulled out the sliding drawer on his desk and examined the calendar. “Ah, my meeting with Herr Miles is tomorrow, not today,” he called out to the other room, and slid the drawer back in. He swept his fingertip across the glossy reddish-brown wood of the desk, a gift from the Emperor’s wife some years back. _Altogether too grand,_ he thought. _It doesn’t suit me._ Then something caught the corner of his eye, and he turned to look at the cabinet next to the door. He kept the cabinet locked religiously, but now one of the doors did not line up flush with the other.

He had told Anton and Christina that that cabinet was never to be opened. Neither of them was foolish enough to risk unemployment, nor the poor recommendation of a former employer, and especially not the possibility of a conviction for burglary. He thought of the other people who had been in the house recently. He had had a few visitors, but the cabinet had not been open after they left. Aside from Anton and Christina and Arthur himself, the only person who had been in the house between this day and previous one was Eames.

 _Maybe his explorations were innocent_ , Arthur argued with himself. _Many people are intrigued by a locked cabinet._

But not everyone has as much to lose from the opening of a locked cabinet.

“Are you coming back to—“ Eames began to ask, but was cut short by the fury on Arthur’s face.

“You have to leave,” Arthur said, trying to bite back his rage and remain calm enough that Eames would not have that as leverage over him. “You have to leave right now.”

§

It was the following Sunday, when Arthur attended church with Cobb and Ariadne, that he first saw the woman in black.

When the priest began the homily, Arthur’s eyes kept drifting to the stained-glass windows. They were the most astonishing of their kind in all of Marchia. The glass was of the purest, most piercing color; the pieces were cut so exquisitely they were rumored to have been shaped by angelic knives. _What kinds of knives do angels have?_ he remembered Cobb asking one night at dinner. _No, Mal, don’t laugh, I’m serious. Would an angel’s knife be made of earthly matter, or spiritual?_

When he was finally able to tear his eyes away from the mouth of John the Baptist, Arthur glanced back and became aware of the presence of a woman who looked as if she might understand something about angelic knives.

She sat alone, in the second to last pew.

She wore a black gown, and an opaque black mantilla covered most of her face. Only one eye was visible between the panels of the mantilla. A huge, grey eye, swathed in shadow, full of unconquerable sadness. An eye that met his before he could look away to safety. When he turned slowly back around, she was gone.

§

The masked ball was a violently-colored whirlpool of flesh and fabric and pointy things. Huge skirts, belonging to both men and women, brushed against Arthur’s ankles. Fingernails got hooked on his jacket, monkeys and bright birds screeched from shoulders, and there was a layer of trampled masks, ribbons and slippers underfoot which got mashed like grapes as people danced and chased and fled monsters of all kinds. Arthur swore he saw a trail of blood streaked across several of the abandoned-object islands on the floor, and he tried not to wonder further.

Each time Arthur came to one of these things he was struck mostly by the unpleasant combined smell of all those bodies.

He mostly slunk along the walls, trying to avoid trouble. Mostly he was looking for, and not looking for, Eames. A few times he caught sight of a man with calves like Eames’s, or a laugh like Eames’s, but the other parts were wrong, and it was impossible to cobble together a person from parts of other people.

He had accepted the possibility that Eames wasn’t there when he found himself staring at a woman in a towering blonde wig. A man had his hand on her waist and was kissing her neck, and she swiveled her head around as he passed by. She cocked her eyebrow and pursed her red lips, which were overwhelmingly full. She was beautiful, and she was not a woman.

The spell was broken by the approach of another man, dressed in a simple black mask and black clothing, who bowed apologetically to the young lady he was with before he swiftly escorted Eames away. Arthur was able to retreat, muttering apologies to a pirate whose earthenware jug he knocked down. He had to remind himself of what Eames had done. It was not right to want to slip one’s hand up the skirts of a man who pries into one’s secrets, who abuses the sacred act of hospitality. But his cock ached at the thought of pushing those crinolines up and taking Eames into his mouth, his other hand rubbing its fingers over Eames’s beautiful rouged lips until the other man’s chin and cheeks were covered with the thick red stuff. 

In his daze he barely realized that he was walking out onto the balcony. It was late August, but the air was already chill. Still, the weather was not quite cold enough for a thick black shawl, like the woman next to him wore over her head and wrapped around her shoulders.

She turned to him and he knew immediately that it was the woman from the church. This time more of her face was visible, but she was undoubtedly the same woman with the huge gray eyes. The woman who looked impossibly like Mallorie Cobb.

Arthur's pulse began to race. Without excusing himself, he shoved his way through a group consisting of a harlequin, a brightly-feathered bird, and a garden-variety fop. Each step seemed to slap against his heart as he ran breathlessly down the marble staircase. His hands skidded along the railing, though he was determined not to let his agitation show by grasping it like an old man or a drunkard.

He leaned against the scrolled post at the bottom. It was as if his body at that moment contained just a droplet of strength and was rationing it stingily. His fingers scrabbled for anything upright to hold onto.

Ducking beneath the stairwell, his hands clutched at his knees, and he doubled over. It was then that his thoughts chose to become articulate.

 _This cannot be a coincidence,_ he thought. _She is always alone.She is always haunting the margins of gatherings, watching for someone, waiting. And her eyes pierce into my heart._

_Someone has put this girl up to this to play at someone's conscience. Mine?_

_Someone knows._

Ears plugged up by the cotton of despair, he was slow to realize that he was not alone in the darkness under the stairs.

"I have listened to your excuses, and I find them insufficient. If you do not pay me the full balance of what you owe me by the fifteenth of October, last time’s _grievous consequences_ will seem like a slap on the wrist, do you understand me?”

“But I promise you,” came the quiet but desperate reply. “I only need to sell this comp–”

“That’s quite enough,” said the first man’s reedy voice. “You will return upstairs, and you will pretend that nothing out of the ordinary has happened, and you will deliver all of the money to me by October fifteenth, or I will kill not only you but the also the people you love the most.”

Eames was silent for an agonizingly long time. “But Herr Graybeard,” he was finally able to croak, “there is no one I love in this city.”

Graybeard tsked. “I don’t think that’s true, Herr Eames. And trust me. I have ways of finding out whether or not you are lying. And if you are, I have ways of finding out exactly who it is you are trying to protect.”

Eames choked out his assent. 

“Come along then, Herr Eames,” Graybeard said silkily. “You mustn’t make anyone wonder where you are.” Then Arthur heard their grass-muted footsteps die away.

Arthur waited until he was certain Eames and Graybeard had left. Then he crept back up the stairs. 

He stood on the balcony watching the dancers, dazed, until he felt the light pressure of a hand on his arm.

"It's just me," Ariadne laughed, lowering her green feathered mask when Arthur shrank back in fear. "I've been looking for you. You've been running away from us all night. Has something more stimulating captured your attention?"

He glanced over her head, though there was no sign of Eames or his tormentor anywhere. 

"Come on," she urged, tugging at his hand. "Dance with me." They stepped into a waltz.

§

"Have you heard?" Ariadne tried to swallow her mouthful of stew before she began talking, but she couldn't contain her excitement. "Marchia has received a gift from the Queen-Regent of Riesland. She had her most gifted goldsmith make an exquisite trinket as a token of her affection for the people of our country, and now it's being displayed at the Imperial Museum. And Yusuf's promised to take me to go see it tomorrow."

"But what is it, though?" Arthur asked.

Ariadne's brow crinkled. "No one is really sure."

"It's some sort of a mollusk," said Yusuf. "A mollusk made of gold, inlaid with enamel. They say it's got hundreds of thousands of florins worth of precious stones in it. And then, if you wind it up, it plays music, and all of the little fish and pearls inside it move up and down."

Arthur scraped his fork across his plate and watched the starchy brown liquid fill in the furrows. The smell of the stew, beef tips bobbing alongside root vegetables in a rich gravy, was enticing, but the moment he raised the first bite to his mouth he found himself unable to eat. He felt guilty. Ariadne, along with Yusuf's housekeeper, Brigid, had worked long and hard to prepare the meal for their guests. The silverware sparkled, and the table was covered with clean white linens. All of the chairs were filled except for one.

Since Arthur had discovered the evidence of Eames's trespassing, Eames had lived with Yusuf and Ariadne. But he wasn't at home tonight. Arthur didn't know why he would have expected any differently. Ariadne said he was perfectly fine, out giving a music lesson to the child of one of the few middle-class people who'd continued to hire him after his travesty of a concerto. Arthur's neck seemed determined to continually swivel his head towards the door.

“I have some news,” announced Yusuf, leaning forward and grinning. “Kapellmeister Miles has given me a leading role in his new opera. Rehearsals have already begun. It’s a very dark and sinister piece, about a man who murders his wife and is driven insane by guilt.”

“That is excellent news,” said Arthur, wishing he had the stomach to eat one of the hot rolls. Usually he ate two or three.

Ariadne and Yusuf began talking about the less artistic aspects of the performance. Someone had seen the soprano’s handkerchief hanging out of the oboist’s pocket. One of the supernumeraries always went left when she was supposed to go right. A viola player was rumored to be the Emperor’s illegitimate son. Two of the choir members refused to stand next to each other because one had borrowed a book from the other two years ago and it had fallen out of a carriage into a puddle. 

"Arthur, is something wrong?" Ariadne asked. “You seem distracted.” 

“Sorry,” he said, trying to make his glances at the door less obvious. “I’ve been busy with my own rehearsals, I suppose.” Yusuf and Ariadne looked at each other doubtfully.

After Brigid cleared the table, she set down a rich chocolate gateau. It was a Rieslandish recipe, Ariadne explained; the food and clothing of that tiny but expressive country were all the rage lately, especially since there had been talk of the Queen Regent’s son eventually marrying the Princess Naomi.

“Perhaps we should play a game,” Ariadne suggested, as she brushed a crumb from the side of Yusuf’s mouth.

“I’m sorry,” said Arthur. “I should probably leave. I’ve got an early rehearsal tomorrow.”

Yusuf chuckled. “This sounds familiar.”

“But he said that the last time, and he ended up staying!” Ariadne said sharply.

“Well,” said Yusuf, “Perhaps we’re no substitute for Eames.”

After they had finished eating and the table was cleared, he pushed his chair back from the table and looked at his hosts apologetically “Thank you for a wonderful dinner,” he said. “And one more thing—would you please send me a message letting me know that Herr Eames has returned home safely?”

Yusuf and Ariadne both nodded their assent and glanced at each other in quiet amusement. 

Arthur pulled his coat tight around him and made his way out into the street just as the lamplighters were climbing up ladders to light the street lamps. 

The way home took him past the street where Robert lived. He stood under Robert’s window, watching gold light bleed out from the edges of the curtains. His door jerked open, and Arthur startled, but it was only Robert’s landlord out for an evening walk. Arthur tipped his hat to the man, who bowed in recognition.

Arthur wasn’t sure why he was there. It wasn’t as if there was any unfinished business between him and Robert after all; he’d tried to apologize, Robert had shown him the brutal honesty he’d deserved, and showing his face around Robert again would likely just dredge up painful memories. But before he knew it his hand was on the doorknob, and then he was mounting the staircase with its burgundy carpet rubbed thin in the center of each step.

“You’re quite lucky I didn’t have company,” Robert said upon opening the door. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. Arthur hoped it was only due to a simple lack of sleep.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Arthur said, looking past Robert at the room with its spartan furniture and stacks of books. There was rather less furniture there than there had been the last time, he noted. “Are you—still living comfortably?”

Robert withdrew into the room and sat down on the couch. “Why? Do you expect me to ask you for money?”

Arthur stood at the end of the couch and played gingerly with the fringe of a blanket. “You know I would help you.”

“You’re not as well-off as you like to pretend, Arthur,” Robert sighed. “You only have your students and your monthly stipend from your patron. And since Eames came along, even fewer comissions.”

Arthur, throwing tact to the wind, sat down beside Robert on the couch. Robert looked down at his own knees, then stared ahead of him, as if hoping someone would burst through the door and save him from having to be alone with Arthur.

“Robert, I came here to apologize,” Arthur pleaded. “I know I apologized last time I saw you, but I was only there by coincidence. This time I wanted to apologize formally, to tell you that none of this has happened the way I intended it to.”

“So Eames ended your affair after he’d convalesced and didn’t need you anymore?” Robert asked acidly. 

It would be unkind to tell Robert the truth, he thought. But it had weighed on him for weeks. And the cruel honesty between them now made Arthur feel strangely liberated to tell Robert what he could tell no-one else.

“One might say that,” Arthur said. Fear and embarrassment shot through him like a physical pain, like the snap of an eye-headache. “It was a bit more complicated, though.”

“I’m sure it was.” Robert turned to face him. Then in an instant his mask of composure vanished, and Arthur could see tension in his muscles, pain in his eyes. “I don’t even know why I even bothered to pretend, or to lie to you. I’ve known it for some time, that—“

“That what?” Arthur urged gently.

“That Eames was in love with you.”

“He has a funny way of showing it,” Arthur snapped. “He stole from me. He opened the cabinet where I keep my most private papers. And I don’t know what he was looking for, whether he wanted money or information or goods to pay off this Graybeard—“

“Graybeard is on his case?” Robert asked quietly. “As if the man didn’t have enough of everything and he needs to go after some poor musician who’s never entirely grown up.” He shook his head.

“You—you know this Graybeard?”

Robert pressed his lips together in a mirthless smile. “Only too well. Tell me, Arthur, do you know Graybeard’s real name?”

Arthur said no.

“All of Marchia knows him as a respectable merchant, an importer of luxury goods. A churchgoer, a patriot, a family man--for the most part. His name is Maurice Fischer.”

Arthur blinked rapidly, trying either to digest or to ignore what he’d just been told. “He’s—“

“My father,” said Robert. “Yes.”

§

Arthur had met Maurice Fischer. Fischer was a friend to many of the city’s noblemen, and Arthur had attended many a gala where Fischer’s exquisite taste in art or his success in acquiring some rare gem or animal horn. The man himself made a rather bland impression on Arthur; Arthur, despite his vast mental catalogue of trivia about most everyone he’d ever met, could not recall a single thing Fischer had ever said. He spoke mostly in monosyllables, and his face registered barely a hint of emotion; judging by his expressions, he seemed to be the sort of man who found everything either quite satisfactory or extremely boring. Arthur couldn’t fathom that this was the man who was almost singlehandedly in charge of all usury, smuggling, and illegal gambling in the empire. But Robert had told him that Fischer had powerful friends among the nobles, who protected him in exchange for a healthy cut of his profits.

Robert claimed that he had no idea where his father was. He hadn’t seen him in more than ten years. Nor, he swore, would anyone believe him if he testified against Fischer. They would only think of what he had to gain as a disinherited son, and he’d be laughed out of the magistrate’s office.

So it was up to Arthur to learn where Fischer lived. He’d gone back to Eames’s old favorite tavern, and Conrad the bartender had told him where to find Teresa. He’d visited Teresa’s cramped old room, remembering to bring sweets for the children.

“I can’t tell you where he is,” Teresa promised. Her eyes were wide, and Arthur could see that her hands shook.

“You will not give me any information that could help Herr Eames?” Arthur asked gently. Teresa’s youngest daughter was walking back and forth in half-circles behind Arthur’s back, staring openly at the finely-dressed stranger.

“I wish I could,” she said, rubbing at the cracked red skin of her hands. “But I don’t know anymore. He moves around a lot.”

“Do you know anyone who knows?”

Teresa rested her hand on the back of a chair over which a piece of putty-colored fabric was drying. “No.” Then her eyes drifted out the window, where a peddler was hawking newspapers. It seemed to jog her memory. “Yes.”

The boy’s name was Benjamin. He could often be found selling buttons and scraps of metal on the street, when he was not hustling at cards. Arthur found him engaged in the latter activity, sitting on the curb, his washed-out leather boots held together with string.

“Are you Benjamin? Arthur asked.

His immediate flight from the scene answered in the affirmative.

Arthur had grown up racing and running after his younger siblings on the farm, and his body had never forgotten how to move so fast it nearly disappeared. But the boy was faster. Benjamin darted down alleys, wove around horse carts and pedestrians. Arthur never entirely lost the sense of where he’d gone, as though the boy left a barely visible silver thread behind him as he ran. But when the boy turned down the street where the street vendors operated during the day, Arthur lost the thread. He’d most likely gone into or behind one of the empty market stalls, thought Arthur, resting his hand cautiously on the butt of his pistol.

He peered into the first stall. It was completely empty. He crept around to the back: nothing. He repeated this with several more stalls. Nothing. He was prepared to leave the third to last stall on the left when he saw, peeking out of a bale of hay in the corner, a black crescent that looked rather like the toe of a boot.

Swiftly he reached down into the hay and grabbed the boy’s arm. Benjamin shook himself free of the hay and blinked at Arthur.

“I’d prefer not to have to use this,” Arthur said, raising his pistol with the hand that was not clutching Benjamin’s elbow.

“Who are you?” the boy, who was not more than fourteen, whined. Arthur lowered the pistol.

“I’m a friend of Herr Graybeard’s,” he explained. “I want to know where he is.”

“I can’t tell you—ow!” he cried, as Arthur gripped his arm harder.

“If you tell me, and if you don’t lie or tell anyone else who’s been asking, I promise you, I can give you a reward much bigger than any he’s ever given you. Because unlike Herr Graybeard, money means very little to me, and I have no qualms about being generous.”

“All right. I swear, I really, really don’t know where he is now, though.”

“But you know where he might be.” Arthur loosened his grip a bit.

The boy nodded fearfully. “He’s got three houses that I know of. One’s in the Latin Quarter, that’s where he goes when he has to really lay low, I think. One’s by the Imperial Gardens, and that’s where he goes whenever he’s trying to entertain a mistress, it’s by all the parties and dress shops—“

A mistress. There had been a woman with Fischer at the masked ball.

“--And one other one, on the outskirts of town, near Hermanstrasse. Not sure what that one’s for. But I think he keeps most of his money there, ‘cause there are always people going there with bags.”

_I know where he is._

“Have you seen him with his mask off?” Arthur asked.

Benjamin thought for a moment. “Once,” he said. “He’s an old man. He’s losing his hair, and he’s got a big nose, and his face is pock-marked.” 

“Benjamin,” Arthur said, slipping a twenty-florin piece into his hand, “you have been immensely helpful.”

§

“I must admit, I’m somewhat confused, Herr Hahnemann,” Browning said, sipping his tea. “You are accusing Herr Fischer of being a criminal based on hearsay. I hope you know me well enough to know that I do not like my time being wasted.”

“I am not wasting your time,” Arthur argued. “The boy’s description of Graybeard matched Fischer’s perfectly.”

“There are a lot of older men with larger noses and pock-marked faces,” Browning laughed. “Perhaps I even fit that description. Are you ready to accuse me of theft and murder?”

“But Your Excellency, I have heard both their voices, and they sounded exactly the same.”

Browning stood up. “I am sorry, Herr Hahnemann,” he said. “I am truly sorry that your dear Herr Eames is in danger, and I know that you wish to do something to protect him, but do you really think that you alone will be able to do what our city’s entire constabulary has been unable to do for all these years? Fischer is an upstanding man. Please, do not trouble yourself about this any more.”

Arthur glanced back at Browning as he exited the meeting room. He was disappointed. He had always considered Browning an impartial judge of character, and he wondered why a man who was so willing to spend so much time analyzing the drinking habits of a court composer would so readily dismiss an accusation of such gravity from a man he allegedly trusted.

He went home; he had been spending less and less time in his quarters at the palace. It was late afternoon. He sat on the couch and tried to relax with a heavy volume of poetry.

It was ridiculous to think that the couch might still smell like Eames. He stretched out, turning his face into one of the pillows in defiance of that sweet, musky, lingering scent.

“It isn’t good to sulk, you know.” Christina stood in the door, rubbing a cloth over the head of a porcelain figurine.

“’M’not sulking,” he groaned, and propped himself up against the couch’s arm.

“There’s news from Riesland,” she said. “I heard it at the market. The gentry has revolted. They hanged the Queen Regent and all her advisors, and now there’s fighting in the streets.”

Arthur’s eyes shot open. “Have you heard any more?”

Christina shook her head. She looked worried. “I do hope nothing like that could happen here.”

Arthur smiled. “I don’t think it would.” He fingered the tassel on a pillow absently.

“Sir, is there anything I can do for you?” she asked. “I have been practicing my recitation—would you like me to read something to you?” 

He nodded, and Christina went off to fetch a book from the adjoining room.

Christina had a talent for acting, and when Eames had stayed with them they had sometimes stayed up until after midnight reading plays aloud. The play she chose to read now, from a gilt-edged red leather volume, was a tragedy by the Rieslandish playwright Belliveau, the story of two inseparable friends torn apart by jealousy and misunderstanding. Now she did each of the parts in a different voice—a maiden’s voice high and lilting, a priest’s voice booming and sonorous, a strong young man’s voice deep and soft. Arthur wondered if he were imagining things, but he could have sworn that she lent one of the friend’s voices a faint Albionorian accent.

Her delivery was riveting, but Arthur was exhausted. The room became formless, and he finally allowed himself to sink into the cushions as sleep scooped out all the life in his body like a trawling net. His dreams were shallow and transparent. Usually they were sprawling, full of people and words and infinite passageways and rooms, as if their worlds had been created by hundreds of masons and gardeners and architects together long before he entered them. But this dream felt like a rough draft, a long, dusty figure splashed starkly across a void. Although he could only see parts of the figure at a time—a shoulder, a wrist, a lock of tangled hair—he knew well who it was, and he tried to reach out to him.

 _Forgive me,_ he tried to say. _If you are the voice of judgment, I deserve the sentence._

Eames disappeared into a smothering fog, and Arthur was alone. Or he thought he was alone. He became aware of the heat of bodies behind him, of silent, faceless men. When they reached out, their dark robes fell down their arms and he saw that their long skeletal fingers did not end but dissolved into mist. They pushed him down onto his knees. He strained to open his eyes, but he was paralyzed.

Before him was a block of wood with a groove in it. A groove the width of a human neck. He felt a hand on the back of his head, an almost gentle hand, and it guided his head down; from there he knew what he was supposed to do. Meekly, he lowered his neck into the groove and waited. The blade came down with a smack.

Arthur opened his eyes and sat up, reacquainting himself with the light and the steady rhythm of his heart. The smacking sounds continued.

“Sir!” Anton called from outside, banging on the door. “I have urgent matters to discuss with you!”

Arthur sprang to his feet. “Come in.”

Anton looked perturbed, and when Arthur looked at him a second time he noticed that he was clutching his arm and that blood was reddening his sleeve.

“Dear Lord, what’s happened to you?” Arthur cried. “Christina?”

“I’m already fetching supplies,” she called breathlessly from the kitchen.

“Sir,” Anton began, “I was polishing your boots upstairs when I heard a loud noise. I went into the study to investigate, and there was a strange man in there. He drew his sword, and I drew mine, and luckily I was able to wound him badly enough that he could no longer fight. He’s lost quite a bit of blood, and although he was able to escape, I am sorry to say I am not sure he is alive.”

 _One of Fischer’s men, no doubt,_ Arthur thought. _Thank God I taught Anton to duel._

“Can you tell me anything about him?”

“He was well-trained in swordfighting,” Anton replied. “He didn’t look or fight like a ruffian. And his blade was exceedingly well-made.”

Arthur tapped his fingers against his lips. “What did the blade look like?”

“It was—I didn’t get much of a chance to look at it, but I could have sworn that there were red stones, rubies perhaps, on the handle.”

Arthur’s breath caught in his throat.

“Are you absolutely sure about that?” he said. His voice cracked.

There were other possibilities, he thought. Perhaps the blade was stolen. Or forged.

But by all indications the man was a member of the Imperial Guard.

§

Arthur had learned the Emperor’s habits well. He knew that Saito valued solitude, and that there were times when he went riding or hunting alone. These times were not regular, and they certainly were not announced, but they often occurred when the Emperor was in a dark mood, and the troubles in Riesland cast a pall over everyone in the court. But Arthur also knew that the troubles in Riesland would make him far more cautious about his personal security. He would likely cling to his advisors. It would be hard to get so much as a note to him without it being examined. And who could he trust as a messenger?

There was only one person at the palace whom he trusted to be above corruption by greed or power-lust.

After Naomi had struggled through the last arpeggiated chords of an aubade by de Clerambault—all lesson long she had been distracted by the curtain-strained motes of light that signified the last of October’s warm days—Arthur slipped her a tiny piece of paper.

“I’d like to talk to your father,” he whispered, watching a coat-tail flash by outside the door. “And I’d prefer to see him alone.”

“Papa doesn’t like to see anyone alone these days,” she said. “He says it’s hard to trust people.”

“Your father is a wise man,” Arthur said, trying to lower his voice as much as he could. “But this is exactly why I need to speak with him alone. There is great danger to him.”

Naomi’s lip began to tremble. “I will tell him.”

§

Arthur had already agreed to be stripped down and inspected for weapons. Now they were riding through a forest populated by immense pines; only the thinnest splinters of light pierced through the moist darkness. The deft horses wove around the trees; their heavy footsteps on the crackling needles released surges of fragrance, a scent that always reminded Arthur of his father staggering home with bundles of wood that he’d coax into the shapes of cradles or chairs.

“We should ride a little farther away from the guards,” Arthur suggested. Saito looked at him suspiciously, but he dug his heels into the glossy black horse’s flanks.

When they came to a clearing, Arthur dismounted. Saito did the same.

“You have two minutes, Herr Hahnemann,” Saito warned.

Arthur took a deep breath and tried to compose his thoughts. He was about to accuse the Emperor’s most trusted official. If he was proven wrong, Arthur himself could be suspected of of sedition, of treason. But Arthur’s instinct told him beyond a doubt that Browning was colluding with Fischer. And that, therefore, exposing Browning would mean exposing Fischer for what he actually was. Otherwise the merchant would go on enjoying the protection of all those with the power to arrest him. And Eames…Arthur tried to push all those thoughts from his head.

“Your Highness,” Arthur began, his tongue feeling like fast-drying clay, “I have reason to believe that the Chancellor is not who he appears to be.”

Saito’s brow furrowed. “In what sense?”

Arthur stepped cautiously closer. He turned and saw vermillion shapes cut through eclipsing green cover; the guards were breaching the forest wall.

“I had evidence that the merchant Maurice Fischer is actually a criminal, by the name of Graybeard.” Saito’s face perked in recognition. “I heard his voice at a ball, threatening a friend. Then Fischer’s son told me the truth about Graybeard, and then I began to think back on my encounters with Fischer. His voice sounded exactly the same. A boy who claimed he saw Graybeard without his mask on described him, and he sounds like Fischer.”

“And what does Browning have to do with this?” Saito asked.

Arthur cleared his throat. “I met with Browning to tell him what I’d heard. Browning dismissed it. That night, a man broke into my home, presumably with intent to kill me. My manservant fought him off, but he saw that the intruder used the blade of an Imperial Guard.”

“This is circumstantial evidence, Herr Hahnemann,” Saito accused. “And you have reasons for wanting Browning out of his office, do you not? He stood in the way of your receiving the position of Kapellmeister.”

“I did not desire the position of Kapellmeister, Your Worship,” Arthur said earnestly. “Herr Browning has always been a supporter of my music, and until now, I have always had the utmost respect and trust for him. But I believe that he tried to have me killed because I discovered the truth. And I believe that he is a danger to your court, and possibly to you.”

Saito looked ready to open his mouth to cut Arthur’s speech off. 

“And—and, Your Worship—I heard Fisc—Graybeard—promising to put an end to Eames’s life. If you do not act, the greatest musical mind of our time will be snuffed out as if he were no more significant than a rat. I may be wrong, but you must at least try to cut off this corruption at its roots. Expose Browning, and you will expose Fischer.”

The guards were approaching. Saito halted them with a hand.

“And what do you suggest I do about this, Herr Hahnemann?”

“I think,” Arthur said softly, “that there might be a way to catch him.”

§

“I have no idea how to catch him,” Arthur moaned, head in his hands, elbows resting on Yusuf’s table. Ariadne waved a forkful of spiced apples under his nose, but he grunted and rested his forehead on the tablecloth.

“What is the relationship between Browning and Fischer anyway?” Yusuf asked.

“The way Robert, his son, explained it to me, Fischer’s wealthy patrons offer him protection in exchange for money and luxury goods. And they allow him to maintain his monopoly on trade in the city.”

“Trade.” Ariadne interjected. “Can we lure Browning out with the promise of goods? That’s what he’s after, isn’t it?”

“I presume so,” said Arthur. “But he’ll be suspicious if someone promises him money—we don’t know how their interactions work, and how much of a cut he gets from Fischer.”

Yusuf held his fork in a loose fist and tapped its end on the table, the way he often did with a pencil when he was thinking. “What if we have Fischer ask him for a favor?”

“What do you mean?” Arthur said.

“Well, as chancellor, Browning has access to certain things at the palace. Things that Fischer might very well want to own or to sell. What black market trader wouldn’t want to get his hands on—“

“The Golden Mollusk!” Ariadne interjected, nearly leaping out of her seat. “Send Browning a forged note from Graybeard asking him to acquire the golden mollusk. Then, if Browning’s really working for him, he’ll bring it to a dropoff location.”

Arthur chewed his lip. “But how’s that going to prove anything? Who’s going to see all of this happen?”

“Well,” said Yusuf, “the Emperor himself would have to see it, if he’s going to believe it.”

“And where? Browning’s not going to be foolish enough to conduct illicit business in the palace or anywhere he can be seen. We need somewhere that’s private enough to inspire confidence, but public enough where people can hide and listen.”

“The Hedge Maze,” stated Ariadne.

“You are brilliant,” Yusuf said, beaming at her. “The Hedge Maze would be perfect. You get him to meet his contact in there. Then, you’re hiding on the other side of wherever he is, and you can hear everything. The Emperor can even hide guards in there. And when he gives himself away, you can pounce on him.”

Ariadne had grabbed a notebook and a quill and was drawing a map of the hedge maze, hurriedly and crookedly, but with perfect accuracy. I’ve walked this maze so many times I know every twist and turn. Here.” She touched the quill to the paper and the ink bled out in a thick circle. “There’s a hidden chamber in here. It looks like solid foliage, but there’s actually a door you can walk through. I only came upon it by accident.”

“You think he’s going to fall for this?” Arthur asked skeptically.

“He may not,” said Yusuf. “But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

Arthur nodded reluctantly.

“Is Eames here?” he asked after a few moments of silence.

“I’m not sure,” Yusuf answered. “You can go upstairs and see, if you like.”

Arthur folded up his napkin. He walked through the parlor and up the stairs, treading as soundlessly as possible. The room where Eames was staying was dark and cold. Arthur stepped up to the bed and ran his fingertips over the covers; the bed was flat. He walked around to the other side to pull the curtains open, and when light flooded the room he took note of a long, looped piece of leather poking out from under the bed. He gave it a tug. It was attached to a bag, a heavy one judging by the resistance it gave. Inside the bag was the glint of metal. Arthur reached into it and pulled out a silver candlestick studded with opal and citrine. _Reduced to stealing from his students’ parents to pay off his debts,_ Arthur thought, his heart flooding with sadness like a cracked barrel. 

_Oh, Eames._

§

The plan was in place.

Arthur had convinced Robert to forge a note in his father’s handwriting, asking Browning to meet Fischer’s messenger in the hedge maze at nine o’clock with the golden mollusk in hand.

He had convinced Benjamin to play the role of Fischer’s messenger, a role the boy knew well. If any more was needed to persuade Browning to appear at the meeting spot, Benjamin was prepared to explain that the current upheaval in Riesland and the subduing of its royalty had put Rieslandish goods at a premium. It was certain to fetch a prettier florin now than before, even when it had been the perplexed and amused talk of all Marchia.

He had convinced Saito to accompany him, in the garb of a beggar, to the hedge maze with his two most trusted guards.

All that was left to do was to convince Browning to appear at the hedge maze. If all went well, if Benjamin actually could be trusted to find Browning in town and show him the proper dead end, if the note appeared authentic, then Arthur should be hearing the sound of footsteps at any time. But there was no sign of Browning. He could hear Benjamin muttering to himself on the other side of the wall as Arthur pressed his ear to the door. 

Finally, when he had begun to despair, Arthur heard the sound of heavy footsteps. It was apparent that there was more than one person with Browning.

“We should probably inspect this maze first,” an unfamiliar man’s voice said from a distance. “Make sure we’re completely alone. You wait here, boy.”

Arthur closed his his eyes. He heard the voice becoming louder and clearer as he neared the hidden chamber; then the footsteps died away. 

The footsteps became louder again.

“Looks like it isn’t a trap then,” Browning said. “And if someone’s trying to box us in here, the others outside will take care of it.” _He doesn’t know about the hidden chamber._ Arthur released the breath he’d been holding.

Then Benjamin began to speak.

“Have you brought the goods, Your Excellency?” There was silence.

Finally Browning spoke. “No, boy, I have not brought the goods. And do you know why?”

“Why?” Benjamin asked.

“Because this little note of yours?” There was the sound of paper rustling. “It’s quite obviously a fake. Herr Fischer’s penmanship has deteriorated noticeably with age. This is his handwriting from ten years ago. I don’t know who you’re working for, but it isn’t any friend of mine.” Browning laughed. “Heinrich, make this boy talk.” Arthur heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Wait.” Saito pushed the door open, and Arthur held up a lantern that illuminated the shock on Browning’s face. 

Browning raised his hands and let his pistol clatter to the soft ground.

§

“I can’t believe you managed it.” Ariadne squeezed Arthur’s hands.

“I did so little,” he said, sheepishly meeting her eyes.

“But you knew it was possible.”

They strolled along past the market stalls at midday. Arthur tried to resist the temptations of Turkish taffy and candy glass while Ariadne picked up a strand of coral beads to admire them.

“You know, you can afford to buy those now,” he mentioned. She turned to look at him, wide-eyed. He smiled softly. 

“I insisted that he allow Fischer’s son to take control of the company, and that he allow him to keep much of the money in Fischer’s coffers. Most of it has been returned to the ones from whom it was stolen. But I also received a percentage which I thought it would only be right to share with you and Yusuf.”

“Why do you care so much about Fischer’s son? Oh,” she said knowingly, taking note of his downcast glance. “You do a lot of things out of guilt, don’t you, Arthur.” She let the beads fall between her fingers.

He drifted towards a stand where a woman was selling trays of rosewater candy. “No more than most people, I suppose.” He handed the woman five florins and wrapped his mouth around the small pink square. It was a good excuse not to continue the conversation.

§

The Royal Hall was bustling. Fans snapped open like the whirring click of night insects. Shoes clicked and fabric rustled. Arthur looked out over the foamy sea of wigs and prayed no one was looking back at him. It was a foolish hope.

He was surprised to see such a crowd. But the Purgatorio had given Arthur his reputation. It was the only piece with Arthur’s name attached to it that deserved to be called genius. As the seats became packed with people in stiff, shimmering clothes, Arthur tried to keep his back pressed to the stage walls, listening to the orchestra tune their instruments. He didn’t want to be congratulated. 

He surveyed the audience. So many of the faces beneath the gold-ribbed dome of the opera house were as indistinct as loaves of bread. Herr Miles sat in the front row, next to the Emperor and Empress. He recognized friends and acquaintances and court officials and pretended he didn’t recognize them at all.

Then he caught sight of gleaming pink lips pressed together, and eyes which managed to give off an engaged intensity despite the difficulty of telling exactly where they were looking. Eames often seemed to be watching something no one else could see. Or he could do two things at once: he could look at a person as though they the only human thing that mattered, but then there would always be some angel or demon begging for his attention, poking out from a place between the strands of ether that existed only for a man whose vision could stop time and part space. Arthur looked away.

He had hoped that _she_ wasn’t in the audience. But of course she was, sitting silently, almost unblinking, her black mantilla draped over her head. Tonight she would have her full power. He’d almost forgotten about her while he was chasing Fischer, despite her presence at every rehearsal of the Purgatorio; his mind was focused on his goal, on his fear of letting Eames slip away. But now he’d returned to his ordinary life, where he was expected to be the composer that he was not. 

When the lights dimmed and he raised his hands to usher forward the slow, crawling whine of the violin, the wail of the dusty-handed soul doomed to crawl upwards without progress, he could feel her eyes on his back. Demanding him to break his silence. His arms seemed to fill with lead. It was grueling to raise them, and he wondered what would happen if he simply let them drop, let his head hang down. Let himself fall to the floor. _If it is the belief that one deserves to live that keeps us upright,_ he thought, _it is a wonder that I have stood all this time._

Glorious as it was, he barely heard the music as he conducted. He had done it so many times before, by rote, barely present in his own skin. 

The final movement drew to its anxious close, the violin like a being at last outpacing its hornet tormentors, but without joy. Arthur let his arms fall and imagined the applause like a wave that was drowning him. It didn’t help. It still sounded like cheering.

“Please,” he vaguely heard himself say, muffled by all of the clapping. “Please.”

When he held up his hands, they finally fell silent.

It was so difficult to breathe at that moment that Arthur wondered how it had been so easy all of his life. His knees trembled. But he had to say it. It was no use keeping it a secret if someone already knew. A secret revealed to one is a secret no more, as the saying went.

“You should not be clapping for me,” he choked out. It felt like retching. “I did not write the Purgatorio.”

The crowd remained in their shocked silence.

“The piece was written by a woman I knew well. Her name—“ He looked for the woman in the crowd, as though she were actually the person she was pretending to be. “Her name was Mallorie Cobb.” He did not have the strength to turn around to see her husband’s reaction. “She was a composer, and a far better one than I. I am not even worthy of that name. But because of her sex, no one took her seriously. So we agreed that I would take credit for the Purgatorio, because she only wanted to see it performed. It was an enormous success, as you know. And then, then—“ Arthur put his hand to his mouth, dreading what came next—“she asked me if I would tell the world who the work’s true author was. I promised her I would. And I never did. I was so enamored of the money and the praise and the illustrious company and I could not bring myself to give it up. And then…then she died before I could make it right.”

The concert hall swam before him. The people whose faces he could focus on briefly wore looks of confusion and horror.

“I hereby resign from my post as court composer. I am not worthy to stand before any of you. May God keep you all.”

Arthur was running before anyone could chase him, could jeer at him.

He ran through the corridor backstage and out into the frigid open air. He had left his overcoat in the dressing room, and his jacket was not warm enough to prevent the cold from seeping under his sleeves. He was frozen in place, caught between the backs of two buildings on a sunken cobblestone road. Should he go home? Should he go to an inn where no one knew him? He did not want to face his own servants. He wanted to be in a carriage shivering along down a bumpy road, headed for a farm where he could live out the rest of his days chopping wood and pulling up turnips. 

“Arthur.” 

At the sound of his name he turned around slowly. The darkness was near-total, but he knew the voice. Of course he knew the voice. It had resounded in his head every night as he tried to fall asleep.

“Leave me alone,” he muttered. “You’ve done your good deed, exposed me as a fraud. Forgive me if I don’t feel like offering you my thanks right now.”

“Arthur, I don’t know what you’re talking about—“ Eames called after him, but Arthur realized at that moment that it was not necessary to choose the perfect direction. It was only necessary to escape. He ran, blood percussive in his ears, down the deserted city streets. No one followed.

“Are you sure it’s necessary to dismiss us?” Christina paced back and forth in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, her face twisted in sadness.

“I’m sorry, Christina, but it is.” Arthur layered his books in a trunk, not pausing to look at the titles or run his fingers over the smooth leather bindings. At that moment books only seemed like an inconvenience, like heavy, dusty bricks one nevertheless felt guilty for abandoning on the roadside. “I’ve decided it’s time for me to live a simpler life. And yes, you may keep the parrot.”

Christina glanced over at the brass cage where a brilliant green bird fidgeted on its perch. Her face lit up, and she coughed to restore her solemnity.

“I think Anton was crying earlier,” she confided. “He can’t even talk to you, he’s so terribly sad.”

Right on cue, Arthur heard Anton’s footsteps rattling the stairs.

“Sir, Herr Cobb is here to see you,” he called from the top of the stairs. It was unlike Anton not to come into a room before making an announcement.

Arthur breathed into his fist. “Tell him I’m not home.”

“He said he’d be willing to wait as long as he had to.”

Arthur sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’ll be down in a moment. Please stay up here, both of you.”

Cobb would probably challenge him to a duel. Or he would kill him on the spot. Either way, Arthur knew he deserved it. He walked down the stairs feeling like a man about to face death. But all he could think about was the ferret in the piano, trapped and boggled in its little black jacket. Grabbing it by the scruff and holding it against his chest to keep it calm. If only our problems were as small as being trapped in a piano, he thought, slowly lowering his foot onto the final step. If only they could be solved by a hand on the neck.

“Herr Cobb,” Arthur greeted him. He was sitting on one of the few chairs that had not yet been sent away. His arm was draped over the chair’s arm, and he looked deep in thought.

“Arthur, how long have we known each other?” Cobb turned his head.

“I did not think that I was someone you wanted to know any longer,” said Arthur.

“I am angry,” Cobb admitted. “After the performance, I wanted to slit your throat. All those years I blamed myself for her death, for why she lost the will to live. And to think that you might have helped her—“

“I tried,” said Arthur. “That was what I was trying to do in the beginning. And then I couldn’t give it up. I was finally worth something.”

“I don’t know if anything would have saved her,” Cobb said finally. “But I didn’t support her. Maybe if I’d supported her composing things would have gone differently.” Arthur saw that Cobb was rubbing a small glinting object between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it as if it were an indecipherable letter.

Arthur didn’t know how to respond.

“I suppose we should thank Eames for making me come out with the truth, then,” Arthur smiled weakly.

“Why Eames?” Cobb frowned.

“Eames read my diaries,” Arthur said. “He broke into my cabinet and read my diaries. And in them I confessed my sin. I considered burning it after I wrote it down, but I didn’t feel I deserved to forget. And I drew a picture of her—I had so many dreams about her, and so many things reminded me all the time. So I have reason to believe that he hired the woman to torment me so that I’d be reminded of my guilt.”

Cobb looked down at his knees and shook his head. From what Arthur could see of his face from that angle, he looked nearly amused. “My God, you’re paranoid. Eames had nothing to do with it.”

“What?” Arthur asked.

“I know that Eames had nothing to do with it. Because I hired her.”

Arthur was so taken aback that words would not form.

“I saw her at a tavern one day, and she looked so much like Mal it was as if--it was as if she were still alive. I could convince myself for a moment that I had not missed my chance to be a better husband. So I paid her a little money to come and sit at rehearsals, and to be near me at parties. To help me pretend.” Cobb’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I think you ought to forgive Eames, Arthur. He has a great deal of affection for you, despite the sadness you’ve caused him.”

Arthur draped his arms over the back of a chair and hung his head. “Surely it’s just pity.”

“I had her wear this,” Cobb said softly, uncurling his hand to reveal the shining object fully. “I had the woman who was pretending to be my wife wear the ring belonging to my real wife.”

“I-I’m sorry,” Arthur stammered, unsure of the proper response. He could hear Anton bellowing “SHUT YOUR BLOODY MOUTH!” to someone or something upstairs. 

“What I am saying,” Cobb continued, “is that we have both done terrible, selfish things. We will probably continue to do terrible, selfish things all our lives. It’s the natural condition of humankind. I thought I could allow myself to try to live in ignorance of my failures for a time. But that night, when you confessed, I realized the hollowness of what I was trying to do. She was gone. Anyone else could only be a pale imitation. And leaving all of this behind will not change your past either. You do have friends here, Arthur.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Arthur said stiffly.

“Stay for the wedding at least.” Arthur could tell from Cobb’s tone that he would brook no dissent.

Arthur laughed bitterly. “Surely they all think I am a liar and a fraud. I passed Yusuf in the street the other day. He did not acknowledge me. I have been laughed at and hissed at in public. Someone had a talking parrot delivered here that said ‘I’m a parrot too! But I’m honest!’ It’s still upstairs.”

Cobb smiled. “You are a liar and a fraud. But they’ll get over it soon enough. And Eames—I don’t believe he pities you. He treasures your friendship and your regard. He loves you.”

“I don’t—“

“Perhaps you’re right,” Cobb murmured. “Perhaps you’re not worthy. But whether or not you are worthy, it is not for you to disallow someone from loving you.” Arthur noticed that Cobb had slid the delicate filigreed ring onto the ringfinger that wore its twin and was twisting it around the finger’s first joint. “That is not your decision to make.”

§

And so it was that Arthur, in his second-finest jacket, attended Yusuf and Ariadne’s wedding on a clear November day. Though they’d been scheduled to marry in August, they’d postponed the wedding these few months, though neither Yusuf nor Ariadne had been straightforward in telling Arthur why.

A modest number of guests filled the pews. One of the front benches was occupied by Ariadne’s brothers and their wives, her parents being long dead and her sisters accompanying her in the bridal party. Yusuf’s widowed father, a middle-class bookbinder from Wagenheim, sat tapping his thumbs together on the opposite bench. Cobb was in attendance--minus the ghost of his wife, Arthur was pleased to note—and Arthur took his seat next to Cobb’s daughter, Philippa, who had grown taller and less blonde since Arthur had last seen her. Arthur took her hand in greeting. She had long fingers, he noticed. A pianist’s fingers. It would not do to have her learn on a piano that sounded as if its notes were struggling feebly to shout through fathoms of heavy water.

Yusuf, at the altar before the priest, seemed uncertain where he should be looking, so he craned his neck and stared up at the ceiling. He glanced at the door once or twice, but just as quickly glanced away, as if afraid too much expectation would bring about disappointment. Or perhaps he felt that not being disappointed would be almost as frightening—hoped for, longed for, yes, but still terrifying, still sending through the body that tremulous feeling that seeing the object of one’s desires might actually literally destroy one, body and mind. 

Arthur could understand that sentiment.

Arthur was not surprised to see Eames playing a sprightly toccata on the organ, dressed in a hyacinth-purple frock coat, looking unusually somber from behind at least. Arthur was surprised, however, to see a full choir clad in gold and white standing as still as humanly possible, like lanterns poked at by the lightest breeze. Choirs did not usually sing at the weddings of the middle and lower classes. They were reserved for the gentry and the nobility, the sorts of people for whom symphonies were named.

He did not have the opportunity to dwell on this mystery for long. The doors split and Ariadne entered, shadowed by attendants of various ages and sizes, unmarried girls all. Two he recognized as her sisters; they shared the same slight build and features that translated well to portraiture. Ariadne’s eyes were wide in the flickering bronze candlelight. She looked nervous, one hand moving up and down on her diaphragm to remind her to breathe. Arthur thought she looked lovely, her cheeks rouged and her hair done up in ringlets. Her dress, too, was splendid, cream with subtle mint-green needlework scrolls running down the sides of the skirt which, as per the latest style, was as wide as the average kitchen door. As Arthur remembered, Ariadne had never been much for needlework (she much preferred to paint). He wondered who had helped her.

As she began her walk toward the altar, Eames lifted his hands from the organ for a moment, and she stopped in her tracks, as if the music were animating her. He touched his hands to the keys once more, creating dense, growling chords, practically the diametrical opposite of the hopscotching piece he’d been playing before. Again she began to glide forward. After four bars, the choir added their voices to the strident welter:

_I am a sinner and my soul is a roving shadow of hell.  
I have tried to fold myself back into darkness  
But darkness spat me back onto the earth.  
And now a window opens like the wings of a hawk.  
I shrink from its fearsome light,  
But its cleanness strikes with unerring claws  
That have lifted so many lowly creatures toward the sun  
And I have not the speed or cunning  
To run from you who have opened love before me._

At first Arthur did not recognize the words. They sounded deeply, unnervingly familiar, but he could not place them. Then they found a place in his mind. He remembered them.

He remembered writing them.

Nearly two years ago, late December, brown ink in a burgundy notebook. They had just buried Mal, and no sooner was her casket lowered into the ground and the first shovels of dirt spooned into the lightless black earth-door than the snow had begun to fall, her grave erased by a gentle floury softness. When Arthur had walked by the churchyard he could almost allow himself to forget, pretend that no one was buried there but the long-dead and nameless. And that night he and Robert had made love in a clean, warm room. And Arthur, sitting awake, watching the whale-oil flames reveal the relaxed tenderness on his lover’s sleeping face, had nearly, _nearly_ persuaded himself that he could love and be loved without feeling like an impostor whose love meant less than a scrap of moldy bread.

The snow melted.

Arthur’s mind was absent throughout the brief ceremony, the priest admonishing Yusuf and Ariadne to give each other _mutual society, help, and comfort, both in prosperity and in adversity._ He was glad for them, but his embarrassment at hearing those words of his, which were never meant to be spoken aloud, surrounded his gladness in a noxious fog. That was all he could bring himself to feel. Embarrassed. He felt he had vomited the contents of his heart before a crowd once again; the difference this time was that he had not been prepared, and that he had not felt a need to confess these particular secrets.

It didn’t matter that the music was darkly magnificent and entirely new for Eames, whose tone had until now usually contained a note of nimble mockery. It didn’t matter that the words locked into the music as if they were warp and weft of a single fine sheet of linen.

It didn’t matter—or it barely mattered—that Eames had elevated Arthur’s words, words to which Arthur had barely given a second glance, to the level of art.

It was not until Eames began to play the recessional that Arthur realized he had not been paying attention as the couple exchanged vows. Arthur tried to drown out the words the choir was singing as he followed the bride and groom and their companions out of the church. Through the spaces between the people he caught glimpses of the newly wedded couple arm in arm. Their faces shone with happiness. As per tradition, some of the young men in the groom’s party tried to steal the bride away, but Ariadne elbowed them--from the looks on their faces it seemed to genuinely hurt--and clung more tightly to her husband.

“Did you know about this? What Eames was planning to do?” he asked Cobb, who carried his two-year-old son, James, on his hip and led Phillippa by the hand.

“I didn’t,” Cobb responded casually. Arthur knew he was lying.

“And you thought it would be a good idea to allow him to go ahead with it.”

Cobb looked Arthur in the eye as daylight hit them. “It was a piece of such brilliance, Arthur, that frankly I didn’t care where it had come from. He could’ve gotten the words and music from killing the Emperor’s stallions and draining their blood and I wouldn’t have cared.”

Arthur glared at him incredulously. “Ever the bloody opportunist.”

Cobb covered James’s ear with his free hand. “You watch your language around my children.”

Arthur stepped into his carriage, where Anton awaited him, and they followed the line of carriages heading to the reception at Cobb’s home.

When they arrived, Arthur was surprised and pleased to find that someone had given the place a thorough scrubbing. It no longer smelled of dust and mold, and Arthur’s nose did not immediately twitch in a prelude to a sneeze the instant he and Anton walked in the door.

Arthur tried to keep his distance from the others. He offered his congratulations to Yusuf and Ariadne, shook his hand and kissed her cheek, and tried not to make it obvious that he was looking toward the door. Looking for Eames. He usually tried to refrain from drinking, but he found that filling and refilling his cup with rum was the only thing that made the noise and the embarrassment and the loneliness and the weight bearable. Soon the room began to look blurry and refracted, a view through cut crystal, and he was glad of it, though Anton put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, whispering, _Sir, don’t you think you’ve had enough? At least for now?_ He tried to take a step forward but lost his balance and wobbled forward into Anton, who held him up by the elbows and whispered _You’re alright. You’re alright._

Just then he looked over Anton’s shoulder and watched a flash of hyacinth purple wend its way through the crowd. He heard Eames’s accented voice thanking people for their praise and congratulations. Arthur grabbed Anton’s shoulders and positioned him so as to obscure himself from Eames’ line of sight.

“Are you all right, sir?” Anton asked, glancing behind him in the direction where Eames was smiling and kneeling to inspect the embroidery on Ariadne’s skirt.

“I think I need some fresh air,” Arthur uttered weakly. Anton his elbow, and Arthur grabbed it, letting Anton support most of his stubborn drunk weight. They stumbled together through the crowd, Anton uttering apologies, _Herr Hahnemann is not well, I am sorry,_ and Arthur trying not to meet the disappointed and pitying eyes. He was sure he knew what they were thinking: _a thief and a drunkard, what use is he to any decent folk?_

Anton led Arthur down the winding iron staircase to the back courtyard.

“I am supposed to be a model of excellent behavior,” Arthur lamented, looking up at the wan light from the balcony and scrubbing his tight, itchy face with the palms of his hands.

“Everyone has lapses now and then,” Anton soothed as he placed a steady hand on Arthur’s upper back. “You must forgive yourself.”

“Forgive myself?” Arthur cried. “Anton, if you had any idea what I’d done—surely you’ve heard—“

“I have heard nothing,” Anton replied. “If anyone has tried to tell me anything, I have refused to hear it, because I know that you are a good man.”

Arthur shook his head slowly, but had to stop himself because it was whipping up his nausea. “I am not a good man, Anton,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to tell you what I did, but I can’t stop now. Too drunk.”

“I am sure it is not as bad—“

Arthur interrupted him. “I took credit for a symphony I did not write. Even after its rightful author wanted me to set the record straight. I refused. Every appointment I had was because of that symphony, Anton. I could not have afforded the home I lived in, or the clothes I wear, or the food I eat without it. Anything. I am a thief.”

Anton only stared at Arthur dumbfounded.

“Well?”

“I am surprised at you, sir,” Anton said at last, eyes downcast. “I have to say I expected better of you.”

“You always thought I could do no wrong,” Arthur said sadly. “Since we were children. And I let you think that of me, I encouraged it, because it made me feel like I was perfect. So every time I stole or lied, I blamed someone else, so that you wouldn’t think any less of me.”

“Oh, Arthur,” whispered Anton sadly. Arthur placed his hands on Anton’s shoulders.

“Look at me, Anton,” Arthur urged. “Please tell me you forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” Anton said weakly.

“You don’t really.” Arthur bit his trembling lip to keep his restraint, and Anton reached up to touch his cheek. Arthur leaned into the soft touch, and without thinking, he pressed his lips onto Anton’s. His mouth slid messily over Anton’s for what felt like a long time, though the motion was all Arthur’s; Anton remained still, holding Arthur in place with a sober hand on his upper arm. At last Arthur drew back, wiped his mouth, and tried to balance himself on his shaky legs.

“I’m sorry. I should not have done that,” Arthur apologized. Anton rubbed Arthur’s shoulder placatingly and looked up.

“I think someone’s watching,” Anton announced. “Should we go back upstairs?”

“I’d rather leave,” said Arthur. He knew they’d have to go back through the house anyway.

They ascended the staircase; their observer was gone by the time they got to the balcony. Inside the girls were dancing in a circle and young men were trying to break the circle to grab them. It was an old Marchian wedding tradition. Eames usually loved games, but there was no sign of him, and Arthur thought—the first comforting thought of the night—that Eames had left the celebration, or was upstairs. Somewhere out of the way, where Arthur would not have to meet his eye.

Anton took Arthur’s overcoat off of the coat rack and draped it over Arthur’s shoulders; they went out together into the damp raw cold of the night.

“Wait,” said a voice from behind Arthur. 

_That_ voice.

Arthur turned around as slowly as possible.

“You can’t run from me forever.”

“I can. The world is getting larger every day,” Arthur said coldly and began to walk, though more slowly, toward his carriage.

“What have I done this time?” Eames demanded as he strode towards him. “You know I had no ill intent in opening that cabinet. Until last week I didn’t even know that that was why you sent me from your home that day. It was just a bloody cabinet full of papers. I stole nothing.” 

“You stole nothing?” Arthur laughed. “You’ve got such an incredible sense of entitlement, Eames. It’s unbelievable. You think everything is for your amusement. You stole things no one was ever meant to see.”

“And look what I did with them! Arthur, if it weren’t for me all of that would still be locked away, and no one would know what you were capable of.”

“They were mine to hide away,” Arthur said sullenly. “You had no right. At least you could have asked.”

“I’m asking now,” Eames said. “Work with me. You don’t even have to like me. But the Duke of Pfefferburg has commissioned an opera from me, and I cannot write it with anyone but you.”

Arthur glanced back at Anton, who watched them with worried curiosity surrounded by the light of his lantern. Then he looked back at Eames. Eames who was neat and sober and sad-looking tonight, yet who was, Arthur reminded himself harshly, the same impulsive, selfish, wicked-tongued man he’d always been and probably always would be.

“I don’t enjoy getting people angry with me,” Eames declared. “Not always. But I can’t keep my mouth shut or my fingers still sometimes.”

Arthur took a step toward Eames. “I will try to work with you,” he said resignedly.

The gleam of Eames’s grin cut through the darkness. “I will try my best not to be jealous of your lover. I know that what we did, it wasn’t what you wanted, and I can’t claim you as my own.”

“Eames, that’s not—“ Arthur rushed to correct him but found himself unable to say the words. “And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll be able to restrain yourself. I don’t want to have to tie your hands or anything like that.”

Eames straightened his shoulders and cocked his head. “For you, I will be on my best behavior.”

§

April, 1799

“So when Girolamo first meets the sorcerer, who do you think should speak first?” Arthur pondered aloud.

“I leave that decision in your immensely capable hands,” Eames answered.

For seven months now they had been working on their opera, The Descent of Girolamo. Its libretto was taken from the story Arthur had told Eames when he lay in bed in a fog of pain and laudanum. The morning after Yusuf and Ariadne’s wedding, and quite early in the morning at that, Eames had arrived on Arthur’s doorstep waving a crinkled piece of paper which he shoved into Arthur’s hands. When Arthur examined it, he found that it was, almost word for word, the story as Arthur had told it. _I never forgot it,_ Eames swore.

_Then why didn’t you write the opera yourself, tell everyone that the story was yours? No one would believe me if I claimed authorship anyway._

_Because,_ Eames had said softly. _I am not that kind of thief. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it that way—I meant that I could never deny you the glory that belongs to you._

“I meant to congratulate you on your vow of chastity.” Eames, straddling the piano bench, jabbed the needle into the piece of brown moire in his hands. He’d been working for hours at attaching a span of fringed lace to it, and Arthur had tried not to watch his hands conducting the thread through the garment in quick, skillful sweeps, hypnotic as it was to watch.

“My vow of—what?” Arthur asked, confused. He tapped the soft end of a quill against his lower lip, wondering how best to end one of the inkblob-studded metrical lines on the page beneath him.

“The other day. When Yusuf asked you about your romantic prospects, you told him you’d taken a vow of chastity. Is that true?” Eames asked.

Arthur felt his cheeks redden. “I told him that because my romantic life is none of his business,” he fairly snapped.

“And, by extension, none of mine. Fair enough,” Eames said breezily, then returned his attention to the needle’s rhythmic rise and fall.

“While we’re on the subject, how is your Annette?” Arthur asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“Nonexistent,” said Eames.

“What? You mean you’re no longer together?” questioned Arthur.

“No.” Eames smiled. “Meaning that she doesn’t exist. I wanted to see how you’d react to the news that I had a lover, so I—well, I made her up.”

Arthur shoved the paper and his lap desk aside and rose to his feet to stand over Eames angrily.

“For six months you led me to believe that you’ve got a lover, that it’s serious, that you feel nothing for me anymore? Did you really expect that I’d throw a jealous fit? I was willing to accept that you’d bloody well moved on.” Arthur shoved Eames lightly, causing Eames to jab the needle into his own thigh.

“I didn’t think you cared about me,” Eames said bluntly. “Not the way I care about you. Perhaps you wanted to fuck me, and maybe you felt some sort of responsibility towards me, like a wayward child who needs to be looked after. But whenever I tried to show you how I felt about you, you looked so cold, so distant.”

“I risked my life for you,” Arthur hissed.

“I know. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.” Eames gazed earnestly up into Arthur’s eyes. “And I am grateful to you for that. You know I am.”

“So what, do you want sighing and fainting and passionate declarations?” Arthur spit the words out.

“Nothing of the sort. But still, bringing a criminal to justice isn’t exactly much of a cure for an empty bed or a lonely heart.” Eames’s tone was glum.

Arthur nearly snarled. “But you’re _alive._ ”

Arthur seized Eames by his lapels and pulled him in, and ground his lips against Eames’s lips furiously, then sucked hard enough on Eames’s bottom lip that he could imagine a dark bruise rising on it. Eventually Arthur gave into Eames’s attempt to apply a gentler touch, and he lessened some of the kiss’s punishing pressure. Arthur kissed a truce into Eames’s vulnerable open mouth, kissed his sorrow and confusion and crushing loneliness into the softest gentlest part of Eames’s body, willing him, _begging_ him to understand.

Eames drew back, touching his knuckle to Arthur’s cheek as a signal that he didn’t mean the pause as a rejection. “You do love me.”

Arthur nodded and swallowed back a swarm of denials and aversions. “I do.” He lifted Eames’s palm to his lips and kissed it softly. “I have. For what feels like a very long time.”

Eames wrapped his hand around Arthur’s. “Let me make love to you.”

They undressed in the quiet bedchamber, sliding off wigs, working open cravats, pulling off each item of clothing—frock coat, waistcoat, trousers, stockings, undergarments --with increasing urgency. Unless they needed to bend to take off a distant garment, they kissed long and steadily all the while, as if it were a non-negotiable state of their being and undressing. When they’d finally shed all their garments Eames guided Arthur down onto the bed face-down, soft palm and rough fingertips splayed between his shoulderblades; the hand traveled down Arthur’s spine in smooth arousing strokes. Eames petted Arthur till his vision went hazy and he was grinding his hips into the bedclothes, his lips parted to allow harsh, heavy breaths to pass. Wet lips massaged Arthur’s back, sucked red marks into his skin. After what felt like an eternity of thrusting his arse up towards Eames’s cock, of telling Eames what he wanted and needed, Arthur felt Eames’s hands part his arse, felt a fingertip—deliciously calloused—brush against his hole.

“Fuck me,” Arthur breathed, half his face smashed into a cushion. He knew his cheek would be embossed with the lines from the fabric for some time afterward, and he didn’t care. “I need it. There’s oil in the bedside table drawer.”

Eames left another lingering kiss on the nape of his neck before reaching over to get the tiny bottle. Arthur didn’t look up; he wanted to hear Eames unscrew the cap, wanted to hear the soft glug of oil onto Eames’s hands, to anticipate the first cold slippery touch without knowing exactly when. Before Eames worked Arthur’s hole open he ran his oiled hands over Arthur’s buttocks, up and down, and kneaded them. Then he began the slide of a finger into Arthur. The pace was glacial, and Arthur needed more now; he canted his hips, pushed them upwards to take in more of Eames’s finger. Eames took the hint, and began to move his finger around in gentle ever-wider circles, patiently, patiently stretching the tight opening.

“Another finger,” Arthur demanded, and Eames obliged. Arthur reveled in the new fullness, and when Eames began to scissor him he felt a delicious pressure against his inner center of pleasure, and he wanted the thick head of Eames’s cock to press against that place inside him. He reached backwards for Eames’s wrist, stilling the motion of Eames’s fingers, and put voice to those desires.

Arthur heard Eames slicking up again. It was only seconds before he felt the tip of Eames’s cock against him. Arthur was stretched wide open and everything was in place ready for Eames to just sink in, but he didn’t. He rested his cock at the top of Arthur’s cleft, rubbing it against the very lowest part of his lower back.

“You know, you’ve got some lovely dimples here,” Eames said, touching the aforementioned dimples on Arthur’s lower back with a finger. He moved his cock away and slid back, and he pressed his mouth to the two indented places his fingers had just touched. “Maybe I’ll just come here instead.”

“Eames,” Arthur groaned.

“Alright, alright. But you have to promise me that someday I can.” Eames lined his body up parallel to Arthur’s again so that he was practically lying on top of him, his forehead touching Arthur’s shoulder. He arched back like a cat to line up once more, using one hand to brace himself on the bed and the other to part Arthur’s buttocks for entry.

“Right now I will promise you anything,” Arthur said, though it was getting hard to speak. “I need you inside me.”

Eames slid into him. The further in he slid, the more Arthur could feel Eames’s body weighing him down. At the moment he wanted nothing more than to bear Eames’s entire weight and be fucked into place. The position kept their lovemaking slow. When Arthur reached down to touch his cock and lifted his hips off the bed, thrusting Eames’s cock a little deeper inside him, Eames pushed Arthur back down by the small of his back.

“Not so fast, love,” Eames whispered, and kissed the edge of Arthur’s ear. 

Arthur’s cock was trapped beneath him, and he could feel the sticky clear liquid seeping onto his skin. Every time Eames’s cock slid as deep as it could go, every time Eames angled his hips to fit inside Arthur fully and smoothly, the dizzy swell in Arthur’s stomach spread a little more ruthlessly. At last he wriggled his hand beneath their shared weight and squeezed his cock, choked it tight as Eames kept rubbing him deep and slow and the pleasure mounted and then, then, when he thought the bottled-up pressure would implode and possibly kill him, he finally came all over his fingers and bedclothes.

Eames sat up without warning, knelt between Arthur’s legs and pulled him up by his hips so that Arthur was on all fours. He began driving into him fast, faster, and Arthur knew by the speed and desperation of his movements and by his grunting that Eames was about to come inside him.

After Eames did come, he rolled onto his side and pulled Arthur close to him. Arthur shied away.

“I’m just going to go clean myself off,” he said apologetically. “Just—while all of this is still new.” He hoped that would suffice for explanation.

After he had gone behind the screen and used the washbasin to clean himself out, he came back to the bed with a damp towel and sponged off Eames’s sticky cock. He flung the towel to the floor and arranged himself Eames on his back, Arthur on his stomach, their shoulders just overlapping. Eames’s hand crept across Arthur’s waist and held him there, urging him nearer. Finally Arthur relented and draped his body over Eames’s chest. Arthur’s fingers tripped up the smooth underside of the arm Eames had flung on the pillow over his head. 

“In case you need to have it notarized, I love you,” Arthur mumbled into Eames’s collarbone. Eames’s hand played in Arthur’s short dark curls, spiraled a lock around his finger and let it unfurl lazily against Arthur’s cheek.

“Mmmm. Thank you,”

“Thank you?” Arthur laughed.

“Why not?” Eames asked, kissing the top of Arthur’s head.

§

“What are you talking about, Arthur? I’d make a wonderful manservant.” Eames smoothed the fabric of the jacket over Arthur’s shoulders and tugged it down over his hips until it fell just right. “I do all the important things well. I dress you, and undress you, and relieve your tension in all the best ways…”

“Yes,” Arthur admitted while looking down and admiring the elegant lines of the rich brown jacket trimmed with Albionorian lace. “You do all of those things well. You also tend to lie in bed until two in the afternoon and demand that I give you sponge baths even though you aren’t even remotely ill.”

Eames shrugged. “One must sometimes put up with unpleasant things for the sake of good service. Though if what usually happens afterward is any indication I don’t think you find it all that unpleasant to bathe me. I’m still sore from last time.” He took a step back, unable to tear his eyes from his own admittedly impressive handiwork. There were still times Arthur felt pangs of envy, that Eames had been aware of his true gifts all his life, that he had known how to blend them seamlessly and fill each role required of him without effort. Not without pain, though, Eames had told him once. _I have had to live with the feeling that no one but my sister has ever truly liked me except as a precocious performing monkey._

“Beautiful,” Eames said, kneeling at Arthur’s side and fingering the jacket’s hem. “The jacket, partly, but mostly you.” He moved around to Arthur’s front, raised himself up on his knees, and fit his mouth over the soft bulge in Arthur’s trousers.

“You can’t make me come in my pants an hour before the performance,” Arthur said, though not without regret.

“Then take your pants off,” Eames said, still mouthing over Arthur’s fast-hardening cock. “I still owe you for the way you licked my arse out this morning. Dear God.”

“I take back what I said about you being good at dressing me,” Arthur groaned as Eames slid his trousers down and pumped his now-naked cock. “You’re incredibly inefficient. For every item of clothing that goes on, two seem to come off.”

“Hush,” said Eames, and his mouth enveloped Arthur’s cock.

Time constraints notwithstanding, coming in Eames’s mouth was preferable to Arthur coming in his trousers, and both were far preferable to not coming at all. Arthur bit his fingers as he came to keep from crying out too loudly, although he knew that stifling his pleasure was just a formality--his servants knew what he and Eames were to each other.

Eames used his tongue to clean Arthur up, followed by the silk handkerchief Arthur reluctantly allowed him to extract from the pocket of the brown frock coat. He then allowed Eames to undo the buttons of his coat and waistcoat--proving his point about Eames’s dubious dressing skills exactly--and let Eames nuzzle at his belly for awhile before the crystal-encased clock on the piano struck struck the half hour and Arthur was forced to push Eames’s head away, though Eames protested sourly.

“You can have this at any other time,” Arthur soothed, tilting Eames’s chin up. “But now you have to get dressed.”

While Eames dressed, Arthur sat in the parlor and poured them each a glass of Eames’s favorite whisky, distilled in a village near his childhood home. He’d never quite gotten used to the oaky, sweetish taste, but he poured it down his gullet for Eames’s sake, because for Eames it was good luck and celebration and comfort and nostalgia. When Eames emerged from the bedchamber, wearing the oxblood jacket Arthur had bought for him—ornate brass buttons and fashionably wide cuffs—Arthur handed him a glass.

“Lovely,” Arthur said, admitting what he often thought and often could not say. “Partly the jacket, but mostly you.”

They toasted to the success of _The Descent of Girolamo_ and drank their glasses down. Arthur leaned over and kissed Eames’s whisky-stung lips.

“It’s a good thing you’ve already had your first brush with scandal,” Eames murmured into Arthur’s cheek. “This opera is not going to sit too well with polite society, you know.”

“I have so little to lose in popular opinion anyway.” Arthur laughed. “I’m not concerned.”

There was a knock on the door just as Arthur dove in to kiss Eames again.

“Come in,” Arthur called.

“Herr Hahnemann, Herr Eames, your carriage is waiting,” Anton announced. “Congratulations to you both, gentlemen,” he offered as they passed, and Eames clapped Anton on the shoulder. They heard sobbing from down the corridor, and Christina approached, holding a balled-up handkerchief to her eyes.

“For once, I’m the one crying and not him,” Christina said through her tears, indicating Anton with her elbow.

“I have cried twice in my life,” Anton replied. Christina choked on a laugh.

“Well?” Eames plucked Arthur’s hat from the wall and placed it atop Arthur’s head, then offered Arthur his elbow. “Our public disgrace awaits.”

“If someday I left Marchia for somewhere else, another country,” Arthur said softly as they’re walking down the stairs, “do you think you might consider coming along?”

Eames’s silence worried Arthur until he ran a comforting hand across Arthur’s back and laughed. “My dear fellow, of course I would. I would follow you to the ends of the earth whether you wanted me there or not. But you’ll never leave Marchia for good.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I won’t? How do you know this?”

“The biscuits. You like the biscuits here far too much.”

Arthur smiled in spite of himself. “I’m sure there are quality biscuits elsewhere.”

“Come home with me,” Eames whispered as they ducked their heads and slid into the carriage, Anton sliding in after them. The carriage jostled about as the horses began trotting.

“Home? Down the street?” Arthur was confused.

“I haven’t been back to Albionoria in a year and a half,” Eames said. “I hadn’t wanted to go back. But there are things I want to show you. I’m from Olcan City. The noisiest, filthiest, most dangerous place in the world. Communal graves ten people deep and fantastic organ meats, though the latter I hope has nothing to do with the former.”

“Sounds like a wonderful place,” said Arthur, unconsciously stroking the intricate lace on his coat.

Eames snuck a wry look at him. “It will be.”

§

The last strains of the overture died away and the curtain rose to reveal Girolamo, as played by Yusuf, alone in a city square. Behind him appeared to be a maze of slick streets writhing with mist as he sang out his sadness and ire at his lack of a soul. Then a figure in a black cloak emerged from the darkness. In his rumbling bass he seduced Girolamo into taking the glass jar he held in his gloved hands: the Jar of Souls. Girolamo tried to resist, but his greed won out, and he ran into the night, singing of his certain damnation as the screech of the violins pursued him like harpies.

The next part of the opera was almost comical. Girolamo tried to cajole a fellow student, a boy who _had a soul like a golden bell_ , into breathing into a jar. He told the boy that the jar contained the larva of a golden fly which could be awakened only by a human’s breath. When the boy marveled at his own soul, which did indeed take the appearance of a golden fly, he asked if he could keep it, but Girolamo refused, and when Girolamo returned to his own room, he swallowed the fly and the boy’s soul became his.

But soon one soul was not enough. Whenever Girolamo met a man with a gift for oratory, or a talent for seducing women, he would tell him the story of the golden fly. There was a scene where hundreds of souls fought for dominance within Girolamo’s body, and Arthur didn’t know how he managed it, but Yusuf played dozens of characters within the span of a minute, adopting and discarding each face and voice and posture as though he were shuffling through a deck of cards.

And when Girolamo met Simonetta, his love, his demeanor was so bright, so boyish, so determined to begin anew, that one could truly believe that he meant to destroy the Jar of Souls. But it would not be smashed, and when he tried to send it down the river it was returned to him on his wedding night by a Mysterious Gondolier who, accompanied by mandolin, sang a cryptic lullabyish refrain about the difference between the things we own and the things that truly belong to us.

And after the jubilant Wedding March and the joyous duet where the young couple narrated the decorating of their new home, Girolamo’s real troubles began.

One night, as he sat to play the piano, he heard an unearthly voice from the adjoining room. It was Simonetta, singing along as she pounded her fist into a bowl of bread dough. He tried to sing along with her, and here Yusuf quite convincingly sang as if he couldn’t sing. His voice, compared to the clarion beauty of hers, was dull and flat, like a donkey straining to overtake a racehorse. The following morning he watched her sleep, agonizing over his jealousy of her effortless charm, her wit, her beauty. When she awoke, he asked her to breathe into the glass jar.

She was suspicious. His efforts to convince her echoed, musically and lyrically, the voice of the black-robed magician who seduced him into taking the jar of souls. At last he grasped her by the shoulders and she, frightened, relented.

After she had breathed her soul into the jar, she was as passive as a doll. When Girolamo tried to speak to her, she answered in single syllables, and she lounged on the couch and stared straight ahead at nothing. Girolamo began to despair. He took to the streets at night, searching down every alley for the man in the black robes. At last he found him and begged him to allow Girolamo to give Simonetta her soul back. The magician agreed that he would give Simonetta a soul if he, Girolamo, would bring the girl to his lair the following day.

Girolamo did so. The magician put them to sleep with a magic draught, and when they woke up she was once again bright and charming. Uncannily so. She sang an aria shimmeringly seductive, overwhelming in the sheer technical skill required; it was as if she were three singers in one. And so captivated was the magician that he seized her at once, and they both disappeared in a clap of thunder, leaving Girolamo broken and bewildered. 

Sick and bedraggled, Girolamo staggered through the city until he to the river, where he sang of drowning himself. Just before he cast himself into the swollen waters, the Mysterious Gondolier pulled up beside him and offered to ferry him to the underworld for the price of a song. Along the way they sang a mournful duet, slow as the sweeping of the oars that pulled them along.

After the Mysterious Gondolier dropped him at the gates, unable to accompany him further, Girolamo wandered through the underworld, battling temptations of increasing magnitude: personifications of money, sex, power, revenge. At last, while he walked through a dense forest on weary and failing legs, he heard the voice of his beloved echoing through the trees, and he followed it to find her trapped inside a cave, lamenting her abduction and her betrayal by the man she loved. He began to unchain her, to beg her forgiveness, when the wicked magician returned from the hunt with his arms full of human bones.

The magician began to fling spells at Girolamo, and he fell to his knees, crying out for mercy from God. His pleas were to no avail. The magician sang out his triumph, thrilling at the thought of possessing Girolamo’s soul. _Without your heart distracted by this foolish mortal, Simonetta,_ the magician crowed, _you and I can rule the underworld as gods; all of mankind will be our carrion feast._ Prying Girolamo’s mouth open with his hands, he recited the incantation to draw Girolamo’s soul out of his body.

Sweetly, Simonetta asked the magician to unchain her so that she could spit on Girolamo’s corpse and then kiss her rightful lover. The magician, gloating, with wide sweeps of his cape, obliged. The young woman knelt over Girolamo’s body and spit into his open mouth.

No sooner did she do this than Girolamo’s body began to come back to life.

The magician, in a rage, began to strike at the walls of the cave, while Girolamo, dazed, his face full of wonder, asked how it was that the magician had taken his soul, yet Simonetta had given it back to him. Simonetta replied fervently that she had always believed that when one person loves another, they carry a piece of their soul, not for use, but for safekeeping.

 _And where was your soul inside me when I stole yours?_ Girolamo asked her.

_You did not have it. Because you did not love me yet._

They escaped as the cave collapsed. _The way through the woods is perilous,_ he warned her, and grasped her hand.

 _But we will keep each other strong_ , she insisted.

 _We will keep each other strong,_ he agreed, and the orchestra provided the exclamation mark as the curtain fell.

From his box Arthur peered down into the audience. They were still and silent as if sleeping.

 _They hate it,_ he thought. _As I expected._ He looked down, but all he could see was the top of Eames’s head; Eames, too, was facing the audience expectantly.

The sound of a single, slow clap-- _the Emperor, probably_ \--resonated through the concert hall and began to pick up speed. It was followed by another, and then another, and the sounds of applause multiplied exponentially. Then the cheering began. The audience rose from their seats, clapping thunderously, shouting barely intelligible words of praise.

But Arthur could see only Eames as Eames looked up at him with a wide grin on his face. He winked, mouthed some words Arthur couldn’t quite read, then bowed deeply in the direction of Arthur’s box.

Arthur thought how absurd the smile on his own face must look, and he was grateful for the relative safety the box afforded. But he was certain that Eames knew everything in his mind at that moment.

The audience was looking in his direction, he realized, and as he made his own slightly embarrassed bows he thought about what the first thing he’d say to Eames would be when they were alone at last, after they’d been congratulated and celebrated and hugged and blushed at and coughed upon by everyone who was anyone in the city. Perhaps he’d say _It’s true. All of mankind is our carrion feast_. Or _Looks like you were wrong about our public disgrace. And you always said I was the pessimist between us._

But no. None of that.

He had something better in mind.


End file.
